About a week ago we heard that the Apple App Store was approaching the 10 billion app download mark. Over this weekend, the 10 billionth app was downloaded.

The person who downloaded the 10 billionth app was from Kent in the UK and is called Gail Davis. The app is called Paper Glider and is a free app that simply is used to see who can throw a paper airplane the furthest. [Read more…]

We’re hearing a few things today about the iPad and iPhone next gen models. First up comes from BGR who reports that the next gen models will not have a home button. Instead of tapping a home button to jump back to the screen, or double tapping the home button to launch the multitasking panel, instead you’ll use gestures that have been found in the just uploaded iOS 4.3 beta.

Both the iPad and the iPhone are expected to go this route and perhaps even on the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 models coming out this year. [Read more…]

Tomorrow is being reported as the day that Apple will be dropping restocking fees in its Apple stores. The current procedure requires that you pay 10% if you return an item within 14 days that has been taken out of its box. Now that the restocking fee will be gone, you’ll be able to return a product or exchange it without incurring any extra fees. [Read more…]

Today, Skype went down for many users across the globe. For most people an error popped up while trying to log in. For those who can log in, it often shows no friends online.

Skype has acknowledged the downtime in a blog post over here. [Read more…]

Apple [AAPL] has announced sales figures for the second gen Apple TV. This week it is expected that sales will hit 1 million. The Apple TV went on sale in September of this year which means it hit the 1M mark in about 4 months.

When compared to the first generation Apple TV, the sales are much better. This is partly due to the newer model having a far better price point than the original. [Read more…]

Microsoft [MSFT] has shut down one of the tools used in the battle against piracy with its software. The tool shut down is the Office Genuine Advantage software that pops up from time to time when adding a new template or updating office components.

What the software did was pop up each time you ran some updates and at that point, checked to see if your license of the software was valid. If so, you could proceed. [Read more…]

The slide, pictured larger below, shows what the future might look like for those wanting to access the internet on a mobile phone.

The slide comes from a powerpoint presentation that was sent in to Wired recently. What it shows is a plan that could see mobile operators charging per service for that what you use on your smartphone. Examples show Facebook being charged at 2 cents per MB of data while Skype would cost you 3/month to use and YouTube, a restricted version, would cost 50 cents per month. [Read more…]

Mark Zuckerberg was recently named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Along with naming Zuckerberg, some pictures of one of the data centers used for Facebook was also posted.

The image above is one of several that shows users where their data is held and how the service manages to keep 500 million + users happy with the service. [Read more…]

Apple [AAPL] released a minor update for iTunes on Wednesday. The new version is iTunes 10.1.1 and this version was designed to fix problems which caused iTunes to occasionally crash.

Unfortunately, it seems to have caused more problems in that some users are reporting that when opening iTunes it simply crashes immediately now and refuses to open. [Read more…]

Several days ago, Gawker’s comment boards were hacked and a number of usernames and passwords stolen. Due to the size of the Gawker network which includes sites such as Gizmodo and LifeHacker, it has prompted a number of web companies to reset passwords of users they think were effected by the attack.

Yahoo!, Flickr and LinkedIn were amongst the first to reset passwords of users and we hear that Blizzard (world of warcraft boards) also reset a number of passwords. We also believe that Amazon has also followed along here. [Read more…]

Facebook is rolling out a new facial recognition system that attempts to recognise people in your photographs.

The system, when rolled out in the next week or so, will attempt to let you know who you should be tagging. The system attempts to tackle groups of photos and people at a time. In the screen shot below, you’ll notice that the bottom row of photos has already got a suggestion. The Facebook system will work this way in that it will automatically tag people and once done, you just need to confirm if the system got it right, thus, speeding up the process of tagging. [Read more…]

Apple [AAPL] has released the iOS 4.1.1 update for those running the second generation Apple TV. What the new update does is fixes a few annoying problems that the ATV had.

Problems indicated included issues with HDTV’s incorrectly displaying 480p content as well as movies and TV shows that from time to time, had to be re-downloaded. [Read more…]