The non-profit organization Orangutans Outreach is collecting iPad donations for a pilot program at the Milwaukee Zoo that will soon be implemented in other zoos throughout North American so that orangutans from different zoos can do a little Skyping. It may sound like the opening scene to a new Planet of the Apes movie, but it seems that humans are not the only ones captivated by the digital tablets.

Apes for Apes

The saying goes that given enough time, a monkey pounding on typewriter keys will eventually compose something as refined as a Shakespearean sonnet. Orangutan Outreach director Richard Zimmerman may not be looking for something more lovely and more temperate than the 18th sonnet, but perhaps just a glimpse into the minds of this majestic creature.

The Apps for Apes project came about rather serendipitously when one of the gorilla keepers at the Milwaukee Zoo saw a joke on Facebook about a gorilla using iPads. That got the zoo keeper thinking, so they put the word out for iPads. A volunteer then spotted the request and donated one.

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Apple is about to reach its 25,000,000,000 billion app downloads and wants to give you $10,000 to celebrate it. Yes, for the lucky number 25 billion, Apple will give an App Store Gift Card with a value of $10,000.

The numbers are remarkable. A little over a year ago, they had celebrated the 10 billion mark and had another contest to give away $10,000. Given that the App Store launched in 2008, with 10 million app downloads in the first week alone, the growth has been exponential.

Here are some more numbers. There are currently over 500,000 active apps and over 100,000 that are inactive (no longer available). There are over 130,000 active app publishers in the U.S. App Store. The monthly submissions at the App Store are about 9,000 (and growing), with over 84 percent of those being games. The current average app price is $2 while the current average game app price is $1. With over 300 million iOS users, you can see why these numbers are so important.

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If you’re ever looking for an example of competition resulting in innovation and, ultimately, improved consumer products — you need look no further than the technology marketplace, and a little story about two rivals by the names of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  There’s no questioning the genius of either man — but it’s also clear that, without the rivalry they shared, neither Jobs nor Gates would have achieved quite as highly.  Steve Jobs, in particular, took some painful lessons learned from his nemesis and turned them into pure Apple gold.  To understand that ironic cause and effect, you have to go back to the beginning…

Back in the eighties, in the true infancy of desk top computers, the field was crowded with companies attempting to gain market share.  At one point Atari was a market leader, with their box-like 16K contraption that offered nothing more than the most basic programming.  There was also the Commodore 64 – Atari’s main competitor.   But, as the industry started to grow,  two main players started to emerge.  One was a company called “Apple,” with its self-contained, giant-toaster-looking computer built in Steve Jobs‘ garage.  The other was a little company started by a Harvard drop out named Bill Gates.   Gates had shrewdly purchased the rights to something called DOS at the time, and then wrote a new program called Windows that made operating a personal computer much more simple for the non-technical user.

Steve Jobs had his fans

Right from the start, Steve Jobs’ company had its loyal — some would even say ”fanatical” –  user base.   Mac users were as die-hard then as they are now.  But back then, Apple was engaged in a life-and-death struggle to gain market share against this nerdy kid in Washington state who had a company called Microsoft.  The future of computing was at stake — and each of the two major players in the game was determined to win.

In retrospect, Steve Jobs and Apple really didn’t stand a chance.  Microsoft and Windows was licensed out to just about every major hardware company on the planet.  The result of that was that there were essentially two types of computers – Apple’s proprietary devices,  and every other computer by every other manufacturer in the world, all of which were running Windows and DOS.

For the consumer though,  what really made the computer was the software and programs you could run on it.  Computer gaming was a new trend back then – after all, this was a generation that had grown up in seedy mall arcades across North America.  It was an exciting development when you could suddenly play in your own living room, on your own computer.  The only  question was:  which computer would you buy?

In that dark time before the Internet, downloading, and file sharing, software was something you bought from a store.   And when you were deciding which computer to buy — your decision was largely influenced by how much software it was compatible with.  On one little wall in the corner, you’d see the Apple-compatible software – and, then, taking up ten shelves and four aisles of floor-to-ceiling space, you would see the software dedicated to Windows programs.    This is where Windows had an insurmountable lead over it’s main competitor – a lead that it has never given up.

It didn’t take a degree in psychology to know that Steve Jobs was not a happy camper when, in 1985, the company he created was wrestled away from him in the boardroom of Apple Inc.    Jobs went on to found Pixar, the company responsible for such huge hits as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.   He also created a new computer company called NeXT which was acquired by Apple in 1996 – a move that brought Jobs back into the near-bankrupt Apple organization.  As he took over the post of CEO and Overall Supreme Warlord – Jobs took those painful lessons he learned from Microsoft and turned them to his advantage.

Steve Jobs Applies the Lessons Learned…

It started with a new service called iTunes – introduced at the same time as a new portable music player called iPod; a handy little device that could hold 1000 songs in your pocket.   Then, in 2007, Apple announced that it was getting into the cell phone business and the world caught its first glimpse of the iPhone.   Shortly after that, Apple introduced the App store – a giant online software retailer where Apple was the only kid on the block.   It signalled the end of one era and heralded the beginning of another — an era where Apple no longer had to play second fiddle to Microsoft and Windows.  Steve Jobs had learned the hard way that no matter how cool or smart the device was – the real key to consumer loyalty was in having the software applications to make that device an indispensable element of the owner’s life.

Twenty years earlier, Jobs had learned from Bill Gates that no matter how smart your computer was – what made people buy it was the programs they could run on it.  Applying that knowledge, he built the entire Apple mobile empire on software that was only compatible with Apple devices, such as the iPhone, iPod , and iPad.

It’s a lesson that other companies may be learning right now — a lesson that is bringing Blackberry creator Research In Motion to the brink of bankruptcy, and a lesson that many new players in the Tablet and Smart Phone industry will learn as they fail commercially.  As the school of hard knocks taught Steve Jobs, it’s ultimately the software programs that make any device a must-have item.

Clean and Organize Your iTunes Library With “Rinse”

If your iTunes library is starting to look like the virtual version of CDs scattered all over the floor, clean it up with “Rinse,” a software download that knows your music better than you do.

Rinse literally takes the majority of the work out of what can be a daunting task.  It doesn’t matter how much music you have, how poorly categorized it is, or how much information you’re missing.  Rinse employs an intelligent database technology that is able to identify tracks even when the artist’s name is misspelled or the album details are incorrect.  Other organizing programs rely on you having all the correct information to begin with.  Not Rinse.  It will remove duplicates, repair mistakes, find album art, and sort out your music genres with impressive accuracy – even if you have a penchant for obscure tunes.

If it makes you nervous to have a program sort out your music and make changes automatically, don’t worry.  Rinse lets you be as hands-on as you like.  No matter what function you’re performing, you have the choice to click either “automatic” or “one by one” – which allows you to preview every revision prior to saving it.  That puts you in complete control – but once you see how efficient and accurate Rinse is, you’ll probably be willing to click on “automatic,” and let the program sort out your iTunes library while you take a nice nap.

How Rinse Works

So – how exactly does Rinse tidy your music?

1. It removes all duplicate songs in your collection.  You’re probably wasting some valuable storage space by having identical tracks on, say, an original album, a greatest hits collection, and maybe a compilation.  Rinse finds your duplicates, let’s you keep the one you want, and erases the rest.  Or, if you prefer, you can keep the extra versions of the song, but have them marked as being duplicates.
2. It repairs mistakes.  Spelling errors, misinformation, incorrect album details – Rinse will find them and fix them.  Guaranteed.
3. It fills in missing iTunes info.  No more guessing what “Track 01” is, or wondering if “Unknown Artist” is the one you’re looking for.
4. It will find and add missing album art.  Tired of looking at that boring musical-note icon for every album cover that you don’t have in your collection?  Rinse will fix that.  It automatically finds high-resolution album art and imports it into your iTunes library.
5. It will organize your genres.  There’s no point in browsing by genre when you have nearly as many genres as you do songs.  Rinse will organize similar music into combined categories that make more sense.

The bottom line is that Rinse is a fantastic clean-up tool and an effective solution to the many organizational problems associated with iTunes.   The program runs with push-button ease but, if you do have a question or require customer support, help is available 24/7 on the company’s Facebook page.

Download the program for Mac or Windows, at www.rinsemymusic.com.

The generous folks over at Apple have decided to relax their rules a little – and have dropped the time limit on iTunes’ “Complete My Album” feature.  Previously, if you bought a song on iTunes, you had only 180 days to purchase the rest of the album at a prorated price.  Now, you’re free to take your time, as you can download the remaining songs any time you wish to do so – providing that the album you want is sold at the iTunes Store.

It’s a bit of good news for music lovers who want to take their time deciding whether the one or two tracks that they already purchased are good enough to make them say “yes” to an entire album.

If you hate reminding friends when they owe you money, you need SpotMe, a handy new cash management app from Boomerang Digital.  With SpotMe, your iPhone can take the social awkwardness out of friendly financial transactions by reminding those who owe you, so you don’t have to bring up the uncomfortable subject yourself.

SpotMe is proving especially popular among college students and roommates, but is a great tool for anyone who finds himself splitting a restaurant bill, sharing travel expenses, or lending small amounts of money.  The app takes over the unpleasant chore of reminding others to pay up, by sending out friendly, automatic email notifications.  Now the person who owes you has no excuse to forget the debt – but you won’t appear to be personally nagging.

The SpotMe service, which was launched last July, has already been updated with new features.  They include email summaries, the ability to view partial payments and payment dates, as well as private messaging.

It’s easy to get started with SpotMe.  After installation, simply sign into your Facebook account and start adding your contacts.  You can input the information manually, if you prefer.  Once that’s done, managing your friendly financial transactions is as simple as the click of a button.

SpotMe is currently one of the top ten mobile apps in the finance category, and is prominently featured in Apple’s “App Store Rewind 2011”.  It’s a free download from iTunes.  There is no Android version of the app at this point but there is a web version available.