Using an iPhone to collect money is nothing new, and apps like Credit Card Terminal and iSwipe Pro have been around for awhile. But Square marks the first time a card can be physically swiped — and, says a post in Wired’s Epicenter, that also means the ability to accept gift cards.

Square’s website says that card swiping can begin immediately after account setup, with “no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs.” Square also says it will do cool little things like email customer receipts and keep track of how many lattes to go till that free tenth one.

If it works as advertised, the system might spread quickly among retailers and consumer alike simply because of its elegance and ease-of-use. And as you may have noticed with Dorsey’s previous project, sometimes that’s all it takes to change the game.

Full Story: Cult of Mac

PinchMedia who provides the analytics for the application breaks down customer usage including what specific devices are being used. This list of devices is reported to developers using internal device identification numbers assigned by Apple. In this case, “iPhone3,1″ was first spotted in Pandav’s usage logs in November. This “iPhone3,1″ identifier does not match up with any shipping iPhones. The last iPhone released to the public was the iPhone 3GS which carries the identification string “iPhone2,1″.

References to “iPhone3,1″ was first discovered in the iPhone firmware files back in August, but this seems to be the first time that it has been spotted “in the wild”. Apple similarly began testing the iPhone 3GS (iPhone2,1) back in October of 2008 about 8 months ahead of its launch. At the time, the usage was similarly focused in the San Francisco Bay Area where Apple is located

Full Story: Mac Rumors

Though already available in other Asian countries such as Japan – where it went on sale last year – the slim smartphone got a late start in South Korea amid regulatory hurdles and tough negotiations between manufacturer Apple Inc. and a local telecommunications company.

But the waiting finally came to an end for about 850 South Koreans who took possession of their coveted iPhones at a boisterous official launching event in Seoul characterized by blaring music and flashing lights.

“I’m really happy because I waited for a long time,” said Kim Min-ju, a dentist who travelled to Seoul from the regional city of Cheongju. Kim said she planned to use her iPhone to study English.

Huh Jin-seok, the first recipient of the iPhone, had waited in line more than 26 hours outside the arena where the event took place. The 25-year-old university student expressed joy, though acknowledged being “a little bit tired.”

South Korea is home to world-beating technology corporations including Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. The country is also known for its high penetration rate for broadband Internet as well as government encouragement for IT-related innovation.

Full Story: Canadian Press

Ashley Towns wrote Ikee, calling it an “experiment that got out of hand,”  a worm that  switched iPhone wallpaper for an image of 80s pop singer Rick Astley. Astley, who sang the 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” who morphed into the Internet prank known as “Rickrolling.” The bait-and-switch worm replaces an ordinary video with one of Astley.

The day after the worm infected jailbroken iPhones, Towns said he had received a death threat, media attention and job offers.

The BBC reports now that Towns signed on with mogeneration, an Australian app company with four apps currently available at iTunes, two are kid distractors and two are restaurant finders.

The worm Towns created wasn’t but opened the door for a nasty worm targeting online banking customers of ING.

Full Story: Cult of Mac

According to Gregg Keizer on Computerworld, Psystar was found guilty of violating the DMCA act by copying and creating special versions of OSX that could be installed on non Apple PC hardware. However, both companies are still fighting it out in Federal court.

Another article by CNET’s Chris Snow detailed how Apple lawyers had combed through Psystar’s records to discover an ambitious plan to take out a segment of Apple’s business through lower priced clones running OSX. The cash strapped company was promising new investors that they had plans to unveil a laptop with OSX and to sell up-wards of a million clone computers by 2011.

Full Story: Examiner

New data released by research firm Gartner Thursday showed that the iPhone has taken a 17.1 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market in the three-month period ending in September. The report said Apple’s share is only expected to grow, with even stronger anticipated sales in the fourth quarter, thanks to expansion into China and the addition of new carriers in multiple countries.

The study found Apple to be the third-largest smartphone company, behind only Nokia and Research in Motion. Apple shipped an estimated 7.04 million iPhones in the September quarter, up from just 4.72 million phones and a 12.9 percent share in the same frame a year ago. That represented a 49.2 percent year-over-year increase in sales.

Market leader Nokia took a 39.3 percent slice of the market, shipping 16.16 million smartphones. That was up from 15.47 million in the third quarter of 2008, but represented a smaller percentage of the overall market. Last year, Nokia took 42.3 percent of sales. Gartner said the company’s 2009 share represents its lowest ever.

Full Story: Apple Insider

The program “Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great” aired Thursday night on CNBC. The “Town Hall Event” featured questions from the audience directed towards two of the world’s richest men.

One audience member asked Gates, to laughter from the audience, what his thoughts were on Jobs and the work he has done as CEO of Apple. The Microsoft founder had fond words for his rival.

“Well, he’s done a fantastic job,” Gates said. “Apple is in a bit of a different business where they make hardware and software together. But when Steve was coming back to Apple, which was actually through an acquisition of NeXT that he ran, Apple was in very tough shape. In fact, most likely it wasn’t going to survive.”

He continued: “And he brought in a team, he brought in inspiration about great products and design that’s made Apple back into being an incredible force in doing good things. And it’s great to have competitors like that. We write software for Apple, Microsoft does. They compete with Apple. But he, of all the leaders in the industry that I’ve worked with, he showed more inspiration and he saved the company.”

Full Story: Apple Insider

I have an unlock for 05.11.07. I will be releasing on 11/04/09, for $0.00

First off, Jody Sanders, I am declining your $10,000. Why? Because you, and the rest of the iPhone unlock sites out there are scum. You make money selling freeware; that’s not cool, and I am in no way going to legitimize it.

Seriously, the people who really lose here are the customers. These sites are full of blatant lies, claiming to have unlocks for 05.11.07 People buy them, and are told the unlock is in development, and the release date is unknown. Imagine you bought a cup of coffee and were told it’s in development? Recently, many of these sites sent out e-mails saying they made major breakthroughs and the unlock will be ready 11/04/09. Coincidence that that’s the release date of blacksn0w?

Full Story: On The iPhone

Nokia said it had filed a patent infringement suit in United States District Court in Delaware. The complaint claims Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., illegally used Nokia’s patents for wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption to make its iPhone work on GSM, UMTS and WiFi wireless networks.

Nokia is an original contributor to the GSM wireless technology standard that was developed in Europe. Most cellphones run on GSM or UMTS networks. The iPhone, introduced in 2007, runs on a GSM network in the United States and GSM and UMTS networks in Europe and Asia.

Nokia said it had invested more than 40 billion euros ($60 billion) over the last 20 years to develop the technologies, which it has licensed to 40 leading mobile phone makers.

Full Story: NY Times

The new design presents a solid acrylic surface on a low-profile body, lacking any physical buttons or the scroll ball of Apple’s previous Mighty Mouse.

More significantly, it shifts the use of the mouse from sensing movement of the device itself over a surface, to one where the user’s fingers are sensed as they move across the surface of the device. The new mouse still uses laser optical tracking to find its relative coordinates, but the new multitouch surface turns it into a closer cousin of the trackpad.

Full Story: Apple Insider