This is an obvious promotion for G-Forms, but fairly cool nonetheless. Not a whole lot needs to be said, it’s a fall from 100,000 feet, in space.

According to a recent mobile data usage report by a network management company named Areiso, the iPhone has more than doubled data usage. Areiso found that roughly 1% of users are responsible for 50% of data usage, and the top 10% of users are responsible for 90% of the data. The really striking thing is that iPhone 4S users enjoy 276% more data than iPhone 3G users.

Please, allow me to say that we need to occupy mobile carriers. I’m tired of the one percent dominating our data usage. As amusing as I find the idea, the argument I just made would only be valid if bandwidth were a consumable product, which it is not.

Obviously, this is due in large part to Siri. Each time Siri is used, data has to be both uploaded and downloaded. Bandwidth is an especially tricky issue when it comes to carriers in the United States, mobile or otherwise. Enjoy unlimited bandwidth while it still exists folks.

Welcome to our last year of society as we know it, I’d like to retain full rights to the apocalypse as well as any purchases made therein.

As some of you know, Apple is quite popular, and as a result people are always speculating about what their next move is. Personally, I don’t like diving into that very much just because I can say pretty much anything, loosely base in some official statement, and call it fact. Having said that, there are a lot of rumors floating around at the moment as it is pre-CES and the start of the new year, and I think it’d be fun to see which rumors will come to fruition. To that end, I’ve compiled a list of things not officially announced yet, and we see what happens next:

• iPad 3 in March – LA Times Article
• Apple TV – CNET Article
• A $300 iPad (a smaller one) – Digitimes Article
• Apple entering the ‘textbook market’ – Mediabistro Article
• iPhone 5 this fall – G4 Games (hah!)
• Retina display for 2012 MacBook Pros – Experts Exchange Blog

Obviously, each one of these have varying degrees of credibility. And, when you’re talking about something like the iPad 3, it’s not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’. Regardless of the ‘factiness’ of these articles (and many others), this coming year will be very interesting for us.

I found this video to be pretty informative. Essentially, it’s just a guy doing a side-by-side comparison of web browser performance on the iPhone 4, Nokia Lumia 800, and the iPhone 4S using various web-based speed tests. In each case, the 4S was the clear winner. For a complete list of each benchmark performed check out this article.

Yesterday the AP ran a story that Apple gave a trove of old documents, software, and blueprints to Stanford University. Among those items, an article referenced the fact that Steve Jobs appeared in the music video above, but I couldn’t find him. In 1987 Apple produced it’s own album of cover songs called, no joke, ‘The Apple Boogie’. The ‘Blue Busters’ song above is among the eight tracks on the album, check out each of the songs here while you can. This isn’t really new, as the songs were converted to MP3s six years ago, but this is the first time I had heard that Apple produced this. Brian Ibbott is going to have a good time with this one.

I’m not sure the DriversEd folks who created this app expected this much attention. They seemed to have the right motive, to entertain and educate people. But after interference from the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License (dude, they have that?) and a letter to Tim Cook from a US Senator, the DriversEd app has been pulled from the Apple Store. The reason? The license pictures are too accurate, “creating a high-quality counterfeit driver’s license difficult to discern from one that’s genuine.”

Of course, the DriversEd folks are claiming that this just isn’t so:

“By design, it would take more effort and expertise to modify the product of the DriversEd.com ‘Driver License’ app than to construct a counterfeit from scratch,” stated Gary Tsifrin, founder and chief operating officer of DriversEd.com.

And, with just a cursory glance at some of pictures they have, I tend to agree with DriverEd. Making these pictures look legitimate would seem to take a lot of work. Sorry teenagers, for now you’ll have to get your fake IDs the old fashioned way. Not sure of what the old fashioned way is, but you’ll have to do it. Either that or go to an Android device.

The Daily Show had a very interesting take one particular app, Tap Fish 2. It’s hilarious, and pretty much speaks for itself:

One thing I did want to throw out there as well. The CEO of Gameview Studios had issued a response to the show, believe what you like:

http://zenentrepreneur.blogspot.com/

In the annual iTunes store retrospective, Apple named Instagram as its ‘definitive’ app of the year. Over the summer, Instagram had announced that it hit 5 million users after being out for eight months, now it’s looking at roughly 11 million downloads. Given the amount of love this app has received both from organizations and users, it’s probably well-deserved.

Instagram

In the gaming category, the iPhone game of the year went to Tiny Tower, with Tiny Wings being the runner-up (basically think tiny things). Game awards on the iPad went to Dead Space, and the runners up were Contre Jour HD and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Overall, not entirely unexpected results. But, at least for me, it was a friendly reminder that these apps existed at all. Things in this market change so quickly, it is nice to return to the apps that I had quite a good time with, like Tiny Wings.

Go to the iTunes Home Page and select the ‘Apple Store Rewind 2011′ section on the top of the store’s page to see a complete list.

Apparently the world as we know it is coming to an end. Either that, or Microsoft wised up and decided that they should have more apps on a widely accepted platform. This week Microsoft released some Xbox Live functionality on a free app for the iOS. Here’s the break down of what you get:

• Read messages and send them to friends
• Invite new friends as well as manage your friends list
• View and edit your personal profile
• Change your avatar
• View your achievements and compare them to others

Prior to this week, the official Xbox Live application only existed for Windows Phones.  And the functionality on the iOS is still somewhat limited comparatively. Through the Windows Phone you can, for example, browse through their entirely catalog of games, music, or movies. If you want to plug in the Windows Phone to the Xbox, you can control playback of audio and video. No one saw this iOS app coming, so who is to say if it will have expanded functionality in the future. At least for this week, lets be happy that it exists.

Google had gone with sweets when it came to naming their OS iterations, things like Ice Cream Sandwich or Honeycomb. Now, a developer from Apple named Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted the code-names for each of the iOS versions. The theme? It looks like skiing:

Hot Tub Time Machine

Among other names were Timberline, Northstar, and Kirkwood. Hopefully Steve doesn’t get into any trouble over this one. It’s obviously not especially critical information, but Apple (like most companies) get snippy when it comes to giving away insider information, regardless of how insignificant it may seem.