A US congressman wrote to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting more information about possible consumer protection issues related to “in-app” purchases — such as kiddy game “Smurf’s Village” we’ve been talking about for months.

Spurred on by a Washington Post article (what, he doesn’t religiously read Cult of Mac?) Congressman Edward J. Markey, a senior member and former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, fired off a few thoughts on the games that target young children.

An excerpt from Markey’s letter:

“I am disturbed by news that in-app purchases may be taking advantage of children’s lack of understanding when it comes to money and what it means to ‘buy’ an imaginary game piece on the Web.  Companies shouldn’t be able to use Smurfs and snowflakes and zoos as online ATMs pulling money from the pockets of unsuspecting parents.  The use of mobile apps will continue to escalate, which is why it is critical that more is done now to examine these practices. I will continue to closely monitor this issue and look forward to the FTC’s response.”

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Is embattled cell phone pioneer Nokia preparing to join the wave of Android followers? Some see such a move a distinct possibility following a candid memo by Nokia CEO Stephan Elop to employees. In the internal message, Elop admits Apple changed the smartphone landscape and the Finnish mobile phone maker must either join or create smartphone eco-system.

“Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we wither build, catalyze or join an ecosystem,” Elop wrote.

Back in December, Adobe pushed out the first beta of version 10.2 of their notorious Flash Player for Mac… a plugin that is so notoriously demanding on battery life that merely installing it can drain the maximum capacity of a laptop battery by over an hour. now it’s available in a final version.

The big advance in Flash Player 10.2 is functionality called Stage Video that offloads almost all of the rendering of high-performance videos to the GPU, using “just over 0 percent CPU usage.” Stage Video should have a noticeable effect on battery life and snappiness, and if you can’t get along with Flash on your Mac notebook, Stage Video support alone makes this an easy upgrade to recommend.

Well, it will make it one, eventually. Right now, not all content providers have enabled Stage Video APIs in their system, and until they do, Flash Player needs to rely on the CPU to process their video. Also, considering that most of the battery drain attributed to Flash on the likes of a MacBook Air come from advertising and site elements as opposed to a playing YouTube video, it’s unlikely that Stage Video will really make a difference in the short term for many users.

Either way, though, Flash Player 10.2 should bring a significant performance increase to the machines of many users, with Adobe citing their two-year old test Mac Mini being able to run full 1080p content with a CPU load of under 8 percent. That’s pretty good performance for one of software’s most notoriously resource hogs.

The Wall Street Journal says the iPad 2 is now in production, according to “people familiar with the matter.”

According to the Journal, the iPad 2 will be:

• Thinner
• Lighter
• Faster processor
• More memory
• Better graphics processor
• Front-facing camera
• No Retina display: screen will be same resolution as original iPad
• Dual-mode wireless: will be available through both Verizon and AT&T
• No Sprint or T-Mobile

WSJ: Apple’s New iPad In Production

Despite having a brand new antenna, the Verizon iPhone 4 also has antenna issues when held in a “Death Hug,” iLounge has discovered.

The “Death Hug” is when the phone is cupped by both hands and held in landscape orientation — not exactly normal. Still, iLounge found it slows both cellular and WiFi reception when loading web pages. But as Steve Jobs pointed out in response to the original Antennagate controversy, holding any smartphone in your hands degrades the signal to some extent.

This doesn’t look like Antennagate redux. We can’t see the VZW Death Hug turning into another PR headache for Apple.

So how are things going over on the Mac App Store? What are developers noticing when their apps first go on sale there?

Marzban Cooper, one of the team behind zen word processor OmmWriter, spoke to Cult of Mac today with some interesting observations about the transition to the Store, and its effect on sales.

His only wish? That there was a similar store for Windows, so he could do the same with the forthcoming Windows version of the application.

All Macs come with a built-in todo list, which you can find inside the iCal application, although personally speaking I don’t get on with it there, and find it unwieldy to use.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to talk a lot about changing the world. I don’t know about that, but he certainly has changed my clothes, and the “accessories” I carry.

I discovered a new brand of pants the other day at REI. They’re called Rebel from a company called Kuhl. Never mind that I’m too old to wear anything called “Rebel.” They’re awesome pants! A brilliant cross between jeans and karate pants, they’re comfortable as they are indestructible. I like them so much that I’m never buying jeans again, and will wear these pants all the time, unless someone makes me wear a suit.

What really sold me on Kuhl Rebels was their iPhone compatibility. No, I’m serious!

I recently was surprised to find a Google Chrome netbook waiting at the door for me. I had requested one through the Cr-48 pilot program when it was announced last year but was not counting on getting one. I am a power Google Apps user and use everything from Calendar to Latitude to Chrome. So far I love it and here are some of the features the Cr-48 has that Apple should employ into their future laptops:

We start the day with a deal on an iPhone that is about as close to free as you can get. AT&T Wireless is offering a refurbished 8GB iPhone 3GS for just a penny – not counting the $36 activation fee. Also on tap is a number of cases for your iPad, including the Merkury cases and sleeves. We wrap up the spotlight with another 2-year iPhone warranty to protect your handset against drops and spills.

Along the way, we also take a look at some accessories for your iPod and iPhone, as well as software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

After consistently undervaluing Apple, Wall St. analysts are now saying the company should be the most valuable company on Earth.

At least five firms Wall St. have upped their 12-month forecasts to an average of $467, putting Apple’s market cap at $433.7 billion, way past Exxon Mobil’s $423.2 billion.

Apple’s stock hit a new all-time high today of $355.12, valuing it at $326.6 billion. The biggest bull on Apple’s stock, Ticonderoga Securities, says it’s going to $550 thanks to future sales in China.

CNBC: Apple Is Most Valuable Company on Earth: Analysts

The Catholic Church has formally blessed a new iOS app called Confession, which lets followers keep track of their sins. No, I’m not making this up!

The $1.99 app was created by an outfit called Little iApps and has been approved by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana. It guides Catholics through an examination of their sins, so when they visit a real priest for the Rite of Penance in a real church they’re ready for the ordeal.

The app guides users through each of the 10 commandments, where they can tap a check box if they’ve, say, coveted their neighbor’s ox or murdered someone.

The app also serves as a cheat-sheet for what sinners are supposed to say in the confessional. For example, when the priest says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,” the app cues the user to say: “For his mercy endures forever.”

It even has a database listing acts of contrition and prayers.

Confession works on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

If you seek a stark picture of the smartphone landscape, look no further than this graph (above) released by Asymco analyst Horace Dediu. Never mind the RIMs and the Nokia’s, the battle is down to two players: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The two platforms, each around two years, collectively have 50.2 percent of the market.

“The conquerors came with new business models and a focus on computing not telephony,” Dediu writes Tuesday. As a result the two companies have led “the most competitive technology market on the planet.”

Developers of an iPhone game called “Smuggle Truck” are already drawing fire – and free publicity – for a game that has not yet been approved by Apple.

The full title of the game from Boston company Owlchemy Labs is “Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration.”

In it, players navigate through what looks like the U.S.-Mexican border. As the truck drives over cliffs, mountains and dead animals, immigrants fall off the truck bed. Scores are calculated by the number of immigrants helped into the U.S.

Remember the heady days of music sales, when Apple beat the stuffing out of traditional music labels, even besting retail giant Wal-Mart as the No. 1 seller of music? Well, the Cupertino, Calif. company still leads, but the growth of music is slowing and appears to be giving way to video.

Revenue from digital music sales for the last three months of 2010 were up just 1.6 percent for Apple, falling 5 percent from the previous quarter, according to a Tuesday report. Although Apple’s digital music sales are slowing, Warner Music Group appears even further along the S-Curve; the publisher’s last quarter sales fell 14 percent, the company announced. For Apple, the next thing is digital video, where one research firm says the tech giant controls almost 65 percent of the sales.

Apple just delivered a small but welcome tweak to the Mac App Store: a window that pops up when you click “Purchase” next to an app, asking you to confirm your decision.

Depending on whether or not, like me, you’ve accidentally bought a $50 piece of software on the Mac App Store through the errant click, you’ll find this either a welcome prophylactic against your own casual stupidity, or an irritant that doubles the clicking required to actually get the app you want.

Unfortunately, if it’s the latter for you, the Mac App Store doesn’t allow you to toggle the purchase confirmation off, as in the iOS App Store, so you’ll just have to live with the redundancy for now.

If you’re on an iOS device, today’s Google logo is pretty neat. Simulating the brass-plated portcullises of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in order to celebrate Jules Verne’s birthday, the logo will read your iPhone or iPad’s accelerometer and slosh around the subaquatic view accordingly.

If you’re on a laptop or a device without an accelerometer, no problem: a handy joystick next to the logo will simulate the effect.

It’s a rough world when it comes to couples who mix computer choices: one partner spends a lot of time trying to “convert” the other, most of the time unsuccessfully.

Mostly Mac users, who just can’t let this PC-using habit alone: a micro-survey found that 80% of Mac fans tried to convince their significant other to switch, but only 60% successfully “converted” them.

These are the water-cooler takeaways from a poll about Macs and PC couples, timed of course for that most noxious of holidays, St. Valentine’s Day. Poll organizers Parallels, who ran the survey to promote their solution for running Windows applications on Macs, said they had some 30 respondents.

The reactions poll respondents had when discovering their potential partners were PCs are pretty funny – you could almost insert owning a PC with some other undesirable habit (smoking?)

“I knew he could be changed.”

“I feared there may be more ‘tech support’ than ‘love support’ desired.”

We had a couple of questions for each other having met on-line on our first brunch date. She said she was currently a Windows users, but she had used a Mac in college for Desktop Publishing, there was hope…”

What do you think – does this bear out your PC/Mac relationship experience? “

Or perhaps this digital divide is a valid reason to sign up for Apple-dating service Cupidtino, which only matches up people who love Macs with other Mac lovers.

Via Parallels

Evidence continues to mount that Apple will release the next refresh of the MacBook Pro line soon, with Best Buy’s internal inventory system already showing a new 13-inch MacBook Pro for $1199 that will be in stock come March 11th.

If Best Buy’s inventory is accurate, it further stresses the likelihood that the new MacBook Pros will use Intel’s dual-core Sandy Bridge chips, which are due to start shipping on February 20th.

Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture promises faster performance in both computing and integrated graphics power, all the while maximizing power efficiency. It is the successor to Intel’s Arrandale mobile processor line, which Apple failed to adopt for the last MacBook refresh, instead depending upon the aging Core 2 Duo processor.

It is unknown what other changes the new MacBook Pros will integrate, but given Tim Cook’s comments that the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook line, a slimmer footprint, SSD options and instant-on ability seem like the most reasonable guesses. What are your predictions?

Verizon Wireless may have sold 500,000 iPhones on the first day the Apple handset became available on Feb. 3, a JPMorgan analyst told investors Tuesday. The estimate is based on the carrier’s statement it had sold more iPhones in the first two hours than were sold on any of its previous first day events.

Analyst Phil Cusick said Verizon’s previous one-day sales record was when Google’s Droid handset became available in 2009. If Cusick’s estimate is correct, Apple is on path to break its previous first weekend sales record of 1 million sales set with the last two iPhone versions.

In just four months, Instagram has already pooled together a user base of over two million daguerro-hipsters, who are now responsible for uploading up to 300,000 photos a day. That’s a success by anyone’s measure, so it’s no surprise that Instagram is looking to keep their momentum going by expanding in interesting ways.

In a blog post, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom explains how the company intends to grow: by opening up the site to other developers and let them hook into the Instagram ecosystem thanks to a new API.

Reading between the lines of Reggie Fils-Aime’s most recent criticism of the App Store, Nintendo is deeply afraid of Apple’s influence on the video games industry: the president of Nintendo of America says that the price levels of the App Store have created a consumer “mentality” that portable games should only cost a few dollars.

Fils-Aime’s comments come even as Nintendo prepares to launch its new handheld console, the Nintendo 3DS, in March.

Apple’s latest iPhone 4 launched especially for use on Verizon’s CDMA network has already been given the teardown treatment by our friends over at iFixit, and their findings have revealed that the revised device packs a redesigned vibrator, and changes to the location and design of RF components. However, the most surprising discovery is the Qualcomm MDM6600 chip, which is dual-mode GSM and CDMA compatible.

The use of this particular chip, which also features in the Motorola Droid Pro, signifies that the iPhone 5 will surely be dual-mode, allowing Apple to ship one handset for both Verizon and AT&T, as well as every other carrier in every other country.

The full iFixit teardown of the Verizon iPhone 4 is certainly worth a read, buy you can check out our highlights from the teardown after the break!

Our friends at 9to5Mac have torn down the Verizon iPhone and found a tasty surprise: it’s based on a GSM world phone-compatible chip!

The VZW iPhone is based on the Qualcomm MDM6600 chip, which is dual-mode GSM and CDMA compatible. That means the iPhone 5 will also surely be dual-mode, allowing Apple to ship one handset for both Verizon and AT&T, aw well as every other carrier outside the U.S.

9to5Mac: Verizon iPhone tear-down posted, reveals Qualcomm Gobi chip! (GSM Worldphone compatible!)

While the long-awaited delivery of the Verizon iPhone has been the big story of the week, evidence continues to mount that another semi-mythical model of the iPhone 4 might be dropping at almost the same time, at least if this Best Buy shelf sticker for the 16GB iPhone 4 is anything to go by.

Other than this shot and the fact that Canada’s The Source chain of retail outlets are also gearing up to sell the white iPhone 4, about the only concrete knowledge to be gleaned here is that the white iPhone 4 will be selling for $599, which is the same off-contract price as the black iPhone 4.

Keep calm, everyone: you only have a few more weeks to wait until the white iPhone 4 is yours… just a few months before the white iPhone 5 makes you wish you’d never bought a new phone more than halfway through the lifecycle of the previous gen!