A new set of documents leaked to Gizmodo show off Microsoft’s Courier’s user interface, which uses everything from multi-touch gestures to pen-based handwriting.

Microsoft Courier Journal Overview Credit: Gizmodo

The journal looks like it’s searchable in many ways, by time, location, and tags, and it’s all accessed by a multi-button pen.

Gizmodo reports:

The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre. 

The Courier also features a camera and there’s mention of “books and subscriptions,” so you may be able to use the Courier as an ebook reader as well.

As of yet, Microsoft has not released any official statement of the Courier.

Check out the Gizmodo's breakdown of all the features the Microsoft Courier has. 

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Credit: Reuters

For Apple die-hard fans everywhere, MacLife has put together a video montage of CEO Steve Jobs announcing every single new Apple product since the original iMac all the way up to the iPhone 3GS and the recently renewed version of the iPod Nano.

Take a look at how much this company has evolved, from a technological perspective as well as Job’s ever changing appearance. Note: His trademark black polo neck, jeans and sneakers look seems to be a look he has chosen to stick with for the last couple of keynote addresses.

Keep them coming Apple!

Motorola and Verizon Wireless will soon roll out a new smartphone dubbed 'Droid' later this month and its been generating by buzz with its 'iDont' ads which poked fun at Apple's iPhone.

An Apple fan, with the YouTube user name “droiddont” posted a rebuttal. The video, titled “iDon’t Care,” uses the same music and minimalist design, but the following lines scroll down the screen:

iDon’t need vague information
iDon’t need scare tactics
iDon’t need to imitate
iDon’t need a droid…unless it’s R2D2
iDon’t have a problem with iTunes
iDon’t buy brands who bash other brands

The original “iDon’t” ad promotes Verizon and Motorola’s upcoming Droid line of cellphones by bashing the iPhone. Lines from the ad include “iDon’t take pictures in the dark,” “iDon’t have a real keyboard” and “iDon’t take 5-megapixel pictures,” that are clearly aimed at the Apple device. It ends with “Droid Does.”

Below is the original Motorola Droid "iDon't" Ad:

How does Microsoft celebrate its Windows 7 launch in Japan? By partnering with Burger King and serving up gigantic seven patty burgers.

The Whopper stands 5.1 inches tall and costs ironically enough 777 yen ($8.53). This price is only available for the first 30 daily customers and the rest have to dish out 1,450 yen ($17.10).

This is the second time that the software giant partners with Burger King. Earlier in 2006, Burger King offered $4 Xbox 360 games featuring the restaurant chain’s King mascot.

Microsoft opened the doors to its first retail store in Scottsdale, Arizona on Thursday, the same day it released its much-talked about, Windows 7.

Microsoft employees cheer during the grand opening of the first retail store in Scottsdale, Arizona October 22, 2009. The first store also launched the new Windows 7 in its most important release for more than a decade, aiming to win back customers after the disappointing Vista and strengthen its grip on the PC market. (REUTERS / Joshua Lott)

So what does it look like inside?

The store itself bears similarities to that of Apples, with its relatively sparse layout and an "Answer Bar" to provide support for Windows users. Microsoft retail store employees wear bright colored shirts which are the colors of the Windows logo; red, yellow, green and blue.

Microsoft is taking their new retail stores very seriously and even hired former Apple real estate chief George Blankenship as a consultant to assist with planning for its retail store initiative and has also attempted to poach Apple's own store employees in order to hit the ground running with experienced staff members already in place.

Watch below a video of the Microsoft retail store as it opened up to see what it looks like:

A second store is scheduled to open in Mission Viejo, California next week Thursday, with more locations in the works.

Apple store (Reuters)pple told its developers on Thursday that it will allow the purchase of virtual goods in its free apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The announcement is a big step forward as it could be the beginning of a virtual goods model.

App makers have been urging Apple to make this move for a while so that it can be as competitive on virtual goods as Facebook has become.

Apple previously allowed "in-app purchases," or purchase of goods from within an app, in paid applications on the AppStore. However, it refused to allow app makers from doing this in free apps.

But now it will allow the purchases of digital goods from within free apps. That’s important to fully flesh out a virtual goods model, where app makers can entice a user with a free app.

Then they can design hooks into the free app where they can get the user to make a purchase of virtual goods, such as a better weapon in a game. It thus becomes much easier to convert a freeloading user to become a paying user.

Nokia on Tuesday announced that it is partnering with AT&T to sell the Nokia Booklet 3G for $299 with a two-year contract.

The Booklet 3G, Nokia's first foray into the competitive netbook space, will be available exclusively at Best Buy locations and 50 Best Buy Mobile standalone stores. The store will start taking orders for the device on October 22 - to coincide with the release of Microsoft's Windows 7 - and they are expected to arrive in stores by mid-November.

A two-year 3G contract with AT&T costs $60 a month, which doesn't really make $299 a very good deal, since the total cost ($299 + [$60 x 24 months]) with the data services will be $1,739. The average consumer might do better to purchase the unit for $599 and buy a wireless card or cellular modem.

Apple iPhone market share is growing at a rate faster than anticipated, US and international market, according to a new report.

A man holds an iPhone in Honk Kong. (Reuters File)

A recent report from Canalys shows that Apple’s share of the US smartphone market in the second quarter was 23 percent, that’s a 16 percent jump from the same period a year-ago and representing an astounding 365 percent increase year to year.

Meanwhile, its competitor RIM’s US market share remained somewhat steady, but had a slight drop. Its market share was 52 percent, down from 56.4 percent during the same period a year ago.

Apple also did well on an international scale with its smartphone market share increasing from 2.1 percent to 13.7 percent over the past year, representing an even more astounding 626 percent increase year to year.

In comparison, Rim experienced slight gains, with their market share increasing from 16.7 percent worldwide to 20.9 percent.

Globally, Nokia still reigns, with its Symbian OS owning 50.3 percent share of all smartphones worldwide. Year to year, though, Nokia’s smartphone market share slipped with last years number coming in at 58.2 percent.

Meanwhile, Windows Mobile experienced a worldwide decline in their OS marketshare, going from 14.3 percent last year to 9 percent this year.

YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to a new video blog post by the founder of the website.

The king of online video sites is celebrating its third anniversary of its purchase by Google by revealing that it is serving over 1 billion views a day. The online video sharing site was acquired by Google on Oct. 10, 2006, for $1.65 billion.

"Today, I'm proud to say that we have been serving well over a billion views a day on YouTube. This is great moment in our short history and we owe it all to you," Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube, wrote on the official blog.

Hurley co-founded the website in 2004 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. They met while employees at online pay service PayPal.

"We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an internet connection can share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so," Mr Hurley said, reflecting on YouTube's original aims.

Hurley said short, user-created clips are still "voraciously consumed" on YouTube, but added, "As we've started to see demand for longer, full-length content, we've brought more shows and movies to the site."

Earlier in August, YouTube said it would add clips from Time Warner programming such as "Gossip Girl" and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

The deal allowed Time Warner to set up individual channels and sell ads to accompany the clips, with YouTube taking a share of the revenue.

Almost a month after Apple launched the iPhone 3.1 update, Apple today released the iPhone 3.1.2 update for iPhone and iPod Touch users.

iPhone OS 3.1.2 does not really add anything new, but it does fix important bugs which Apple recommends that iPhone and iPod Touch users should update.

According to the changelog from Apple, this is what 3.1.2 takes care of:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
• Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming

How to update to iPhone 3.1.2:

1. Connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your PC.
2. Launch the iTunes application and click the Check for updates button.
3. iTunes will show you the above window saying: “iTunes will update your iPhone to iPhone 3.1.2 software and will verify the update with Apple“. Click on the Update button.