Many smaller developers without access to a professional public relations agency, don’t always know how to approach a blogger/reviewer.  For that matter, some PR agencies are also somewhat mystified about how bloggers work. This new e-book by Erica Sadun and Steve Sande lays it all out: How to pitch your product to a publication.

Apple will soon offer the Nest Learning Thermostat through both its online and retail Apple Stores, according to online reports. The internet- and iOS-enabled thermostat will sell for $249.

We all knew the business model, commercial breaks, for the TV industry is a mess. But now the foolishness has been taken to new heights. Fox has filed a lawsuit against Dish Network for taking care of its customers. The whole industry is ripe for disruption and may not even see it coming. Perhaps Apple does.

Mobile web browsing on smartphones and tablets now accounts for 20 percent of all web traffic in the United States and Canada, according to research from online advertising network Chitika.

Apple is now offering a free "App of the Week" on its iOS App Store, the company’s official App Store Twitter account announced late Thursday. The first free app offered this week is ZeptoLab’s Cut the Rope: Experiments, a puzzle game optimized for iPhone and iPod touch.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has asked the company’s board of directors not to issue dividends on his restricted stock units when the company pays out its planned dividends to shareholders this summer. The CEO’s request will sacrifice a nearly $75 million payout on his 1,125,000 restricted stock units.

"Greenpois0n’s" Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak was released early Friday, bringing untethered jailbreak support to iOS 5.1.1. The release supports most versions of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch and is the first untethered jailbreak option for Apple’s latest iOS firmware.

Landing a jet on an aircraft carrier is one of the hardest things humans do. So it’s a great candidate for a game, both as a challenge and as a sobering introduction to the real thing. This game has great visuals and is easy to fly, but it’s not really a technical flight simulator. That’s quite okay.

The Mac Observer’s Jeff Gamet joined the Not Another Mac Podcast to discuss Cool Mac and iOS apps, iPad accessories, and more.

There are plenty of places online to share your photos, and social networking services make it easy to do. Which is your favorite online photo sharing servce? Take today’s TMO forum poll and let us know.

Facebook is moving deeper into the photo sharing game with the release of its Facebook Camera app for the iPhone. The app landed on Apple’s App Store on Thursday, and lets users share photos from their iPhone through their Facebook account.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is planning to spend US$3 million on Apple equipment including Macs, iPhones, iPads, and AppleTV units. The purchase will be part of a secure mobile device pilot program the agency is launching.

Mac OS X’s Fonts Window, which is accessible from many programs by hitting Command-T, makes handling and choosing your fonts easier. (Note that we didn’t suggest that anything about fonts is ever actually easy.) In this article, Melissa Holt will show you some secrets of that little window and how to use them to your best advantage.

Design guru Sir Jonathan Ive said in an interview on Thursday that he wants to stay at Apple, effectively squashing speculation that he would leave the company in order to return to England. Sir Jon made the comments to the BBC in an interview related to receiving his knighthood on Thursday.

Pascal Cagni, Apple’s General Manager and Vice President for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, resigned this week after 12 years with the company.

Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil Speakers Touch app for iOS has been inexplicably removed from the App Store, Paul Kafasis, the company’s CEO, noted Thursday, leading some to speculate that iOS 6 will include functionality similar to that which the app provides.

Apple released Aperture 3.2.4 on Thursday, an update that addresses two issues. The first is improved stability with Snow Leopard, and the second is an issue when working with external editors in whatever OS you’re working in.

Ever wonder how to send multiple photos from the Photo Library on your iPhone? Ever wonder why some Keynote files are packages and others aren’t? Ever have trouble connecting to your AirPort-connected hard drive? How about knowing when — and when NOT — to worry about your Mac’s RAM consumption? All this and much more, as usual, on today’s Premium episode of Mac Geek Gab. Subscribe for just US$25 and you’ll get access to this show PLUS all the archives, and two extra shows per month for the duration of your six-month membership. Subscribe today and support your two favorite geeks!

Apple and ten other companies have settled a lawsuit with licensing company SimpleAir relating to the delivery and processing of content, notifications, and updates on mobile devices.

Apple has become such a large company that its influence ripples throughout the market in ways we are just coming to understand. That, in turn, can dictate our personal technology choices in new ways.

Microsoft has won an injunction in a German court against Motorola Mobility Android devices, the company confirmed Thursday. The injunction arises from Motorola’s infringement of a Microsoft patent covering the transmission of long text messages by breaking them into multiple parts.

Google’s Android platform does not infringe upon Oracle patents, a federal jury decided Wednesday, ending a five week trial and lawsuit dating back to late 2010. Thepatents at issue relate to Oracle’s Java platform, which the company acquired during its purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2009. 

The Casellet is an iPhone case integrated with a wallet that can conceal a small amount of cash or credit cards. It’s perfect for those occasions when you need your iPhone (4 or 4S) but don’t want to carry a wallet or purse.

The Deal Brothers found us a deal on the refurbished 13" MacBook Air 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo for $1,099. This system was originally released in October of 2010, comes with Snow Leopard, and it ships for free.

Sharp and Foxconn will be working together on a factory that will produce displays for Apple’s popular iPhone. The news follows reports that the two companies had struck a deal to work together on LCD panel technology.

Rumors that Apple is planning to release its own television have been circulating for months, and now Forrester Research is saying that Apple’s best move into the television market may be to make a TV that isn’t a TV at all.

Sir Jonathan Ive told media this week that Apple’s current secret projects account for the most important work the company has done so far. Today TMO readers are talking about what the Mac and iPhone maker may be working on, and what impact it could have on the tech world.

The North Carolina Utility Commission approved Apple’s request to build a 4.8 megawatt fuel cell facility on Wednesday as part of its data center in Maiden. Once completed, the power plant will be the single largest privately held fuel cell center in the United States.

Apple aired two new iPhone 4S commercials Wednesday evening that show off the smartphone’s Siri voice control feature. Both ads include actor John Malkovich interacting with Siri, much like other recent iPhone commercials with celebrities.

Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, said on Wednesday that the product his company is working on developing now is the "most important" product yet, and the one he’d like to be remembered for. While he didn’t name that product, by definition, it means that he thinks it’s more important than the original iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, or even the iPad.

Apple is accusing the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against it and five of the so-called "Big 6" U.S. publishers is "fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law." In court documents, Apple argued that the DOJ has sided with Amazon’s Ebook monopoly, rather than competition.

Mac Geek Gab listener Keith frequently finds his IMAP email attachments corrupted. We show him how to solve his problem using Apple Mail.

In a continuing series of reviews, John Martellaro has been looking at styluses for iOS devices, primarily an iPad. The SPIGEN Kuel H12 stylus, like the previously reviewed Wacom Bamboo, is almost perfect. But not quite.

Microsoft’s venerable Office suite may finally be heading to iOS and Android tablets this November, according to online reports. The software was said to look nearly identical to an alleged leak revealed in February.

Enterprise software and consulting firm IBM has banned the use of Apple’s Siri Personal Assistant feature on employees’ iPhones. Siri, and other apps and services such as Dropbox, pose a security risk to IBM due to their requirement that user data be transmitted to and stored on third party servers. 

In the latest development in the companies’ ongoing patent infringement litigation, Samsung has asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to sanction Apple for allegedly withholding thousands of pages of testimony that the iDevice maker was ordered to deliver.

Patent lawsuit settlement negotiations earlier this week between Apple and Samsung failed, leaving the two companies on track for a trial next month. The negotiations came at the request of Judge Lucy Koh who is overseeing the infringement lawsuit, and included the CEOs from both companies.

Lion may be Apple’s newest and ost feature-filled operating system for the Mac, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a few issues. Today TMO readers are talking about stalls and other performance issues with the OS and what they’ve done to troubleshoot the problems.

All network devices, from computers, to smartphones, to printers, to televisions, need a unique IP address. These are usually handed out by a router as needed and change from time to time. Some devices, however, such as file or print servers, greatly benefit from having an IP address that never changes. The Mac Observer shows you how to easily set up static IP address, or "DHCP Reservations," using your Mac and an Airport Extreme.

After being awarded the title of Knight Commander of the British Empire last December, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan Ive was officially Knighted on Tuesday. 

Apple released Camera Raw Compatibility Update 3.13 late on Tuesday. The update added iPhoto ‘11 and Aperture 3 support for new digital cameras from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and Sony.

Using Terminal commands, you can change the default behavior of your Dock in all sorts of ways. In this tip, Melissa Holt will cover how to "pin" your Dock to a corner of your screen, how to keep any icons from being removed or added, and how to gray out the icons of hidden applications. It’s practically a tip-o-rama in here.

Apple dominated mobile PC shipments during the March quarter, according to a new report from NPD DisplaySearch. When combining laptops and tablets, NPD said that Apple had 22.5 percent of the market, well ahead of second place HP, which had 11.6 percent of the market, as shown in the chart below.

Apple is so big, the company’s influence should be dictating your tech investment strategy, according to Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, and what Apple doesn’t have, Samsung does. The analyst outlined a three column investment strategy for investing with companies aligned with either Apple or Samsung, or at least steering clear of companies that aren’t "Apple-safe."

The Deal Brothers found us a deal on a new Mac Pro 12 Core 2.66GHz Intel Xeon for $4,739. This is a deal on a new unit from MacMall (rather than a refurb unit), and it’s discounted by about $260. Click through for the other specs and details, and there are some other Mac Pro deals, too.

Apple has been coy in the past about disclosing its sales of Apple TVs. Data has come out in bits and pieces.  However, to gain insight into the prospects for an Apple HDTV, it seems timely to estimate how Apple has done with the Apple TV over the years.

Buffalo Technology recently released the market’s first 802.11ac router, capable of 1300 Mbps wireless link speeds. Dave Hamilton took some time to look at it, and he found that not only is it a great device to use at the new, faster speeds, it’s also a great, high-quality, dual-radio router to use with your existing 802.11n and 802.11g networks, too. Watch his video review for more.

Apple is the world’s most valuable brand for 2012, according to Millward Brown’s annual BrandZ report, which estimates brand values. Apple, which maintained its number one position from 2011’s BrandZ list, saw its brand value rise over 19 percent, to nearly $183 billion. 

Apple’s hearing for an injunction blocking the import of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet into the United States is set for June 7, and Samsung has until May 25 to respond to the iPhone and iPad maker’s motion.

All that Mac Geek Gab listener Larry wanted was to connect to an airport’s free Wi-Fi while he was waiting for his flight. Unfortunately, his MacBook Pro and the Wi-Fi network didn’t play nice. We show him some tips on how to troubleshoot connection issues on public Wi-Fi networks.