The digital camera has been around for thirty years, and the brilliant scientists who came up with the idea were just awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month. That’s great, but I still like waving my photos around at parties and plastering them all over the walls of my bathroom.

Luckily, Hewlett-Packard’s petite new portable photo printer lets me print photos at any party or… any bathroom with a power outlet. It’s so simple to use, it’s practically idiot-proof. Plus it’s got Bluetooth, so I can even print from a BT-equipped cell phone. Just so long as that cell phone isn’t an iPhone.

More shenanigans after the jump.

Over 6 million songs in the iTunes Music Store. God knows how many albums that translates to, but we must be insane to try and pick 20 albums worth considering for their combination of music and artwork, right?

As long as we’ve got that straight on the front-end, then.

Herewith, a collection of 20 albums available on iTunes, loosely organized by release date (in reverse order) and presented with the thought they might make good additions to the much-ballyhooed iTunes LP upgrade hyped at Apple’s It’s Only Rock and Roll event in September.

No doubt readers may quibble with some (perhaps all!) of our selections; no doubt you’ll have suggestions of your own. Do let us know abut it in comments. All album links open in iTunes.

Whether you are looking for bargains on a MacBook Air, a Mac Pro Xeon Workstation or an iPod, there are many options today. ClubMac has a deal on MacBook Air laptops starting at $1,100, while the Apple Store offers Mac Pro Xeon workstations starting at $1,999 (with free shipping.) No matter if you want music, video or photos, there are deals on iPod Classics, iPod videos and iPod photo.

For details on these and more products (including an iPod armband), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

When it comes to gadget-hungry teens, Steve Jobs makes Oprah look like some cable-access talking head. At least that’s the findings of a telephone survey of 1,000 12 to 17-year olds. Jobs was deemed the ‘most admired celebrity entrepreneur’ by 35 percent polled versus 25 percent for TV magnate Winfrey.

By comparison, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk received 16 percent of the votes and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had 10 percent of the survey results.

Rather than hissing each time Microsoft introduces a new version of its Windows operating system, maybe Mac fans should cheer. That’s the opinion of one analyst who says Windows actually boosts Apple hardware sales. “No negative correlation exists on AAPL’s hardware sales when Microsoft launches a new OS,” according to financial analyst Brian Marshall of Broadpoint.AmTech.

Although Apple has parlayed Windows into a highly-publicized nemesis of Mac owners, sales of Cupertino’s computers actually rose when Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 98 were released. “Ironically, we believe new OS launches from MSFT may have acted as a ‘delayed accelerant’ to AAPL’s computing sales,” Marshall said.

Now that Apple has updated the iPod shuffle, giving it a new look (sort of like a Bic lighter), as well as more colors, what’s one to do with the tiny tie-clasp-like older MP3 players? One option: swap out the music for a mini MP3 DV camera.

Xiangyun Industries Co., Ltd. turns the old shuffles into a 1.3 megapixel 20 fps video camera capable of 640×480 or 1,280×960 pixel JPG photos.

The price is between $15-$30 but only order of 1,000 video shuffles, please. The little gadget sounds like a perfect stocking-stuffer or maybe even a spy cam.

[Via Engadget]

There’s a new twist on the “Guest Account” bug with Snow Leopard updates. Along with all /user files vanishing if you have the “Guest” account active when upgrading, if you accidently use the guest account mass file deletions could happen, reports said Monday.

“So I restarted my computer and logged on again, it was exactly the same, everything gone. At which point I looked in the Users folder to find that my User profile had been removed and replaced with a fresh one with the same name,” a user calling himself dbferrari wrote Sunday on the Apple Discussion board. The person said he had accidently selected the “guest” account rather than his personal account at the login screen of OS X 10.6.1.

Friday we wrote about similar reports of data deleted after being logged into the “guest” after an upgrade.

The cure until Apple addresses the bug: disable your Guest account.

[Via Apple Discussions and Engadget]

“Red skies in morning; Sailors take warning.” Maybe that old seafaring wisdom should include users of the Microsoft-owned Danger Sidekick. In something akin to an “all is lost” warning, Redmond has told Sidekick owners data stored on the first smartphone “has almost certainly been lost.”

What’s to be done? Not much, except sit tight and hold onto your rebates. “Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power,” urged Sidekick carrier T-Mobile, halting sales of the device. In the meantime, T-Mobile reportedly will offer Sidekick owners a free month of data services (not voice), valued at $20. How much is your data worth?

On my blog a couple of weeks back, I wrote the article More proof the iPhone App Store destroys people’s understanding of good value, highlighting rampant idiotic reactions to Loren Brichter having the audacity to charge three whole dollars for a complete rewrite of his stunning Twitter app Tweetie. Patrick Jordan referred to Tweetie 2’s price-point as a “very,very,very Bad Call,” (his emphasis), suggesting it was “spitting in the face of existing Tweetie users”. My thinking: You’d pay more than three bucks for a crappy sandwich or a luke-warm beer in the pub. But, apparently, three bucks is too much of a ‘reward’ for the hard work a dedicated indie dev has put into a leading and brilliant product.

The dev of Alchemize has clearly had enough of this kind of attitude. On the TouchArcade forum, he reveals that his company has received an astonishing 3400 emails in one month moaning about the price of his three-dollar game. Although its Puyo Puyo-style mechanics won’t win too many awards for originality, Alchemize is a fairly good game, and one that would set you back considerably more on competing platforms. To that end, the dev’s now upped his app’s price to an eye-watering $39.99 in protest at people constantly complaining about paying a few bucks for a videogame.

It’s pretty clear that something needs to be done regarding App Store pricing and value perception, because the race to the bottom is hurting many developers. Apple’s recent ‘top grossing’ chart doesn’t really help. Personally, I like Eucalyptus dev Jamie Montgomerie’s suggestion that the App Store should split its chart in two, along the lines of British 8-bit videogames during the 1980s and early 1990s, offering separate ‘budget’ and ‘full price’ charts.

Alchemize is available on the App Store, and really isn’t worth 40 bucks; but it’s probably worth a shot at three, after the 12th.

For many, the gloss finish on a MacBook Pro’s screen can become irritating. Although Apple stepped in to allow MacBook owners with 15.4-inch screens to swap out for $50 the displays for a matte finish, that option wasn’t available for owners of the 13-inch Macs – until now. TechRestore will “repair” your MacBook Pro’s glossy screen for $200.

“Send in your MacBook and [TechRestore] will rip out the screen and replace it with a matte one , and because the screen no longer has the glass panel, you also get a matte-black bezel, complete with holes for the iSight camera and LEDs,” according to Gadget Lab.

TechRestore says it will send your MacBook back within 24 hours and with a 1-year warranty.

[Via Gadget Lab and TechRestore]