On Wednesday, May 15, Brandon Ashmore of Mentor, Ohio decided to
download a free word game for his iPhone called Say the Same Thing.
That happened to be the 50 billionth download from the App Store, and
so Brandon was the lucky winner of an iTunes gift card worth $10,000.
As Marco Tabini of Macworld notes,
Apple just celebrated 40 billion downloads in January of 2013. At this
rate, it won't be long before Apple hits 100 billion downloads. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer identifies his 31 favorite apps for lawyers.
- Jessee Londin of Law Technology News reviews Retro List, a to-do list app that works much like a piece of paper.
- Tim Baran of Rocket Matter shares 7 iPhone tips.
- I'm a big fan of 1Password, which I reviewed earlier this year, and some new features were added this week. David Chartier of AgleBits, the maker of 1Password, explains what is new.
- Google had a bunch of announcements at its I/O Conference this week, one of which was that the Google Maps app is coming to the iPad. Casey Johnston of Ars Technica has information on all of the announcements.
- BlackBerry also had a big conference this week. As Peter Cohen of iMore reports, one announcement was that its BBM messing service, long a signature feature of BlackBerry phones, is coming to iOS and Android this summer. It sounds like this will be a cross-platform alternative to Apple's Messages app.
- CBS released on its website a great, un-aired video from 60 Minutes in which Bill Gates talks to Charlie Rose about Steve Jobs. Worth watching.
- Yesterday I reviewed a very short Lightning cable. If you want a very long one, Nick Guy of iLounge has a first look at the BlueFlame 2M cable, a USB to Lightning cable that is twice as long as the Apple cable and uses tangle-resistant fabric.
- I mentioned last month that, to raise money for the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, a website was auctioning off coffee with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. The bidding started at $50,000 and ended this week with a $610,000 bid from an anoymous bidder. Wow.
- Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal discusses ways to work with Microsoft Word documents on the iPad.
- And finally, if you have a guitar and an iPad with a copy of GarageBand, you have what you need to record a song. But if you also happen to be Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and you are on the International Space Station, then you can record a fantastic cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity. This video is amazing. Ground Control to Major Tom...
