In the news

This is a short work week, but there were still quite a few interesting iPhone-related news stories over the last few days.  Here are some that caught my attention.  For those of you in the U.S., have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I’ll “see” all of you again on Monday.

• Looking to buy a new product from Apple?  There is only one day every year that Apple holds a sale, and it is this Friday.  We won’t know until then what is on sale, and it may not include the iPhone, but you might be able to save some money on some useful accessories such as an AirPort Base Station or Apple In-Ear Headphones.  Apple also typically discounts third party items that work with the iPhone such as batteries, cases, speakers, etc.  To see what is on sale, visit your local Apple Store this Friday or visit the online Apple Store.
• RichardSolo is holding a sale on on the 1200 version of its iPhone external battery.  I received a free review unit of an older version of this battery last year (my review is here) and I love it and use it all the time.  The battery is regularly $54.95, but is 50% off from now until Monday, only $27.48. A great deal on a useful product.
• It is not just the season for sales; it is also the season for gift guides.  Here are two good gift guides for
  
  lawyers, both of which include iPhone related gifts.  Neil Squillante,
  
  publisher of the amazing TechnoLawyer newsletters, identifies a few
  
  gift ideas on the TechnoLawyer Blog.  Reid Trautz has also published a gift guide on his site, Reid My Blog!.
• Apple has received some bad publicity lately for rejecting a few apps from the App Store on grounds that are debatable.  This led Apple’s Senior VP for Worldwide Marketing to talk about the issue with BusinessWeek.  It’s an interesting interview that reveals, for example, that Apple receives 10,000 app submissions a week.  Many of those are presumably updates instead of new apps, but even so, wow.
• Macworld’s Dan Moren runs through all of the uses of the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button on the iPhone.
• Most of Apple’s current iPhone ads focus on the apps, but AppleInsider reports that Apple is now running two new ads that focus on an advantage of AT&T’s 3G versus the 3G you get with Verizon and Sprint, namely the ability to talk on the phone and use data at the same time.  Thus, you can talk on the phone and also get some information off the web or send an e-mail at the same time.  I use this feature all the time, so I’m glad to see Apple take note of it.
• If you want more information on Google Scholar (which I discussed here), then click here for an audio interview with Google’s Rick Klau by Ari Kaplan for Law.com’s Legal Technology Blog.  Rick Klau also appears on the latest episode of This Week in Law.
• And finally, Daniel Eran Dilger reports on an AdMob estimate that 50% of all mobile data traffic in the world is from the iPhone.