Nokia Moves To Ban Apple Imports, Apple Moves To Ban Nokia Imports [Lawsuits]

First Nokia sued Apple. Then Apple sued Nokia. Last week, Nokia went to the International Trade Commission and requested a ban on the import of infringing Apple products. Today, Apple asked ITC to ban the import of infringing Nokia products.

This game of patent-infringement ping pong dates back to October, when Nokia first sued Apple for violating 10 patents, including holdings related to GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN. About a month and a half later, Apple countersued, claiming that Nokia was attempting to steal their technology. Since then, both sides have filed further lawsuits claiming further patent violations of various sorts.

This week, the squabble’s stage has moved to the International Trade Commission. A few days ago, Nokia requested that the ITC ban the importing of any and all Apple products, from MacBooks to iPhones, that make use of the patents in question. Today, Apple fired back, requesting the same ban on Nokia’s mobile phone imports.

The ITC’s evaluation process takes 15 months, so don’t worry about these companies’ products disappearing from shelves anytime soon. But Apple’s latest filing reminds us that we shouldn’t expect this this legal game of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better to go away anytime soon. [Bloomberg]

Mophie and Flo Give iPhones Live TV and the Juice To Make It Last [FloTv]

Back in November we saw FLO TV running on the iPhone and weren’t sure what to make of it. Their partnership with Mophie makes it perfectly clear: new packs will bring live TV and extra juice to iPhones.

We thought that Mophie’s Juice Packs—slide-on cases that double your iPhone’s battery life—were a sound investment for a power user. Now, power TV watchers will be happy to hear, Mophie has partnered with FLO TV to develop a battery-extending, live TV-enabling pack for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If extending battery life and watching live TV on your iPhone are two things that interest you, this is a match made in heaven. There’s no pricing yet, but expect the doubled-up packs to roll out in the first half of year. [Ubergizmo]

Haiti Text Message Donations Top $10 Million [Haiti]

Faced with an “unprecedented mobile response,” mGive and the Red Cross have collected over $10 million in relief for Haiti. With text donations pouring in at a rate of 10,000 a second, and average donations of $10 automatically charged to phone bills of mobile users, mGive’s system has proved essential for those looking to contribute.

For a full list of ways to donate, as well as how to avoid scams while doing so, check out LifeHacker’s guide.

It’s now also possible to donate via iTunes. [NewsDaily]

iNaked Application for iPhone Could Bring World Peace [Nsfw]

I wish this iPhone video app to get people naked in real time actually worked as perfectly as shown here. In fact, I wish it just existed, period. For now, I would just get amused by the perfect choreography. [Nomao]

The Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]

In this week’s self-contradictory app roundup: Videos, recorded! Hoops, shot! Stuff, copied and pasted! Photos, LEGO-ed! Navigation, given away! Classic movies, obsessively documented! Marbles, gratuitously exploded! Rivals of Yelp, doomed to die! And more…

If you’d rather view this post as a single page, click here.

Simplenote: An app that’s similar to, but obviously better than, the built-in notes app, if only for its online syncing abilities. The app is now free, though you can still download a paid, ad-free version for $5.

Facebook: Facebook! You probably already have this. But if you don’t, get it now, because it has fully customizable push notifications. If you have the app, just check for updates. If not, it’s still free.

LEGO Photo: Takes photos, and converts them into pixel art, in which the pixels are actually little LEGOs. Sort of. There’s a nice ripple effect when rendering photos, though the results, unless your subject is well-defined, can be kind of muddy. Free.

CoPilot Live Directions: CoPilot is an all-around decent turn-by-turn app, and it’s one of the cheapest available. This version, though, lets you use the app for free for 30 days, after which voice directions, traffic, and a few other features are stripped. But you still get to keep turn-by-turn directions for free, which is pretty amazing.

Momento: A very pretty journaling app. Unless you’ve felt the specific urge to keep a journal or scrapbook on your iPhone before, it’s hard to recommend this. But if that’s something you’re into—apparently this is a thing, now—then there isn’t a nicer way to indulge your habit. $3.

iVideocamera: When this video camera app came out, it was a joke—it recorded postage-stamp-sized video at a stuttering framerate, without sound. Now, it records at a decent resolution—320×486—at a full 10fps. This conforms to commonly held definitions of “video,” almost! There’s still no sound, but this is the best you can do without jailbreaking. A dollar.

Turner Classic Movies: TCM’s got an extensive database of vintage film trivia, previews, posters and other info—it’s an invaluable source for people who like films that are older than they are. The app is a faithful adaptation of most of the web content, including a lot of video. As a non-buff I found a fair amount to be entertained by here, though I wish it was a little less than three dollars.

Pastefire: Remember Pastebot? It was great. Pastefire is like that, sliced in half: Any content you paste to your online Pastefire account, or into a bookmarklet, shows up on your iPhone in Pastefire. One you’ve got it set up, it’s quite a bit faster than sending an email, and the app gives you a lot of options as to how to deal with the pasted content once you’ve got it. Free.

Typograffit: Instant ransom letters! It’s pure gimmickry, but pretty well executed. $2.

Dark Nebula: is great. It’s basically a marble labyrinth game with guns, and explosions. My opinion here doesn’t really matter, though, because over the weekend, this app—normally a dollar—is free. The discount is live now, so GO GO GO.

NBA Hotshot: I laughed at how simple the original Skee-ball game was, but I kept coming back to it. NBA Hotshot used the same physics engine and general concept, so if you’ve already got one, you probably don’t need the other. But if you don’t, this simple throw-the-ball-in-the-hoop casual game is a brilliant timesuck, which you can play for a short or as long as you want.

MobileMe Galleries: Apple doesn’t release official iPhone apps that much, and adding a MobileMe gallery after all these months seems a little tardy. Thankfully, it’s pretty good—better than Flickr’s app, for example, and a nice value-add for MobileMe subscribers.

Yelp: So, uh, as I was writing this roundup, I got an email from Yelp. It was long, and it was announcing a new version of the app. Here’s the part that matters:

Yelp Check-ins: We’ve now added the ability for yelpers to “Check-in” to businesses. This includes being able to broadcast your whereabouts and send Quick Tips to your friends on Yelp, Facebook and Twitter who, if they opt-in to these updates, will be able to see your location both via “Push” alerts, as well as on a map. Active users of this feature may receive “Regular” status of highly-frequented businesses. This means they are part of an active group of people who patronize a business and this moniker will appear next to reviews and tips and on business pages in the app, as well as on the business listing on Yelp.com.

In other words, Yelp probably just murdered FourSquare in its sleep. Yikes. There are some other nice updates to the app’s augmented reality feature, account support and sharing faculties. Still free.

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Apple’s Batmobile [Image Cache]

With all the Apple tablet talk these days, it’d be OK to lose sight of the fact that the company’s been there before (sort of) with the Newton. Seen here is a rare “Batmobile” prototype of that now defunct PDA.

From Flickr user and Batmobile owner splorp, we learn that the Batmobile was a pre-lease model of the Apple MessagePad (related to the Newton platform). Sadly, this particular unit does not work, and may have never worked, having been a “technical sample only.” [Flickr]

In the U.K., Steve Jobs Is a Footballer [Steve Jobs]

As a soccer player living in a country slightly apathetic to the sport, I appreciate any mention of it that I can get. Even so, the geek in me wept a little at hearing this news out of the U.K.:

Steve Jobs: Soccer player?! A full 20% thought so, while 10% thought he was a turtleneck-wearing trade union leader. As for Bill Gates, he was one of the Great Train Robbers of the 1960s, according to 10% of survey respondents. There’s video too, if your inner geek can handle it (although I swear some of these blokes don’t have British accents…):

Twitter didn’t fare much better (not that I really give a hoot about Twitter). What’s going on in the U.K.? [CNET]

Here’s One Way to Temper Your Road Rage: iGun for iPhone [Viral Videos]

Anyone who’s ever crawled along at a snail’s pace on a freeway should relate to this guy hilariously busting out his iPhone, firing up the iGun app, and totally losing his shit. Is it real or a viral? You decide:

iTunes Links: iGun Pro 2 costs 99 cents and has 4 guns to choose from, and there’s also a basic free version. [GadgetLab]

64 Shots of the Apple Tablet Being Used in Real Life, For Better or Worse [Photoshop Contest]

For this week’s Photoshop contest, we asked you to create images showing the fabled Apple Tablet being used in day-to-day life. And there’s a clear line between those craving the tablet and those mocking it. I prefer the latter.

Hold Up, RIM is World’s Fastest Growing Tech Company? [Rim]

According to Fortune, Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, is the fastest growing tech company in the world. There isn’t much information on the rankings, but they are apparently determined various criteria including profits, turnover and investment return over three years.

Though we already knew that RIM made a whole potload of moola, Fortune reveals that the rise in popularity of BlackBerry smartphones (and apparently the fact that, the Curve outsold the iPhone during the first half of this year) contributed to RIM’s 84 percent rise in profits.

Trailing behind the Canadian company on the “100 Fastest Growing Firms” list is U.S. chipmaker Sigma Designs. Apple hits at 39 on the list. [Fortune and BBC]

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