Bloggers know that a good Apple story is a sure-fire way to precious pageviews and ultimately, cash. Music groups are figuring out how to capitalize on the cult of Steve Jobs, too. Silicon Alley Insider reports that since appearing in an Apple ad on April 27, "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by The Ting Tings shot up to No. 11 on the iTunes charts and No. 93 on Billboard's top 100. Additionally, Apple fanboys snatched up copies of "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" after Apple debuted the song in an ad on October 28, and then "New Soul" by Yael Naim took its turn on the charts after Apple featured it in its MacBook Air ad campaign. So the capitalist-friendly among us can't help but cheer music group The Bird & the Bee for their video director Dennis Liu's cynical attempt at an Apple-whoring music video, embedded below.

As a a part of a deal to bring HBO shows to the iTunes store, Apple will allow a content producer to break its $1.99-per-show price structure for the first time, HBO employees involved in the deal told Portfolio. Last summer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused to allow NBC to do the same, so NBC boss Jeff Zucker took his shows elsewhere — to Microsoft and the Zune, specifically. Why did HBO get the deal while NBC didn't?

Apple will sell iPhones in Singapore, India and Australia through Singapore Telecommunications, Bharti Airtel, Globe Telecom, and SingTel subsidiary Optus, respectively. With the Optus deal, Apple will abandon its prior strategy to sign only exclusive deals with service providers; Vodafone, which operates a rival carrier in Australia, also agreed to a deal with Apple last week. [WSJ]

He made his fortune — about $18 billion worth — "fundamentally altering the course of human existence." His patron saints are Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. And like his fellow geek, "the Nerdling," he's featured in Christopher Tennant's Official Filthy Rich Handbook, deliverable in June. An excerpt, below.

Analysts say the craziest things when trying to guess what the supersecretive Steve Jobs is up to at Apple. Last quarter, Jobs has only billed the company for $30,000 in business-related travel reimbursements. That's down from the $550,000 peak in the previous quarter, which was the high-altitude mark for the year. Meanwhile, the stock price has gone up around 30 points in the same year. That has lead Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer to speculate on what the sudden drop in private-jet expenses means. One scenario? Jobs is busy micromanaging employees on the latest batch of new products ahead of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Did you know that there are people in certain parts of the world who have never even seen an iPhone? Fortune has helpfully mapped out the fetishized Apple product's availability. The countries where one can procure an iPhone (at least by this summer) are marked in red. (Sucks to be you, Russia!) Of course, the map does not include black-market iPhones. [Fortune]

Apple has settled a class-action suit in Canadian courts over first, second and third-generation iPod batteries that fell well short of claimed battery life. Up to 80,000 Canadians are eligible for CA$45 credits. I'd make a joke about worthless Canadian currency, except that it's now trading near parity with our own worthless currency. [Canada.com]

Already "walled off" from any discussion of Apple's iPhone, Google CEO Eric Schmidt could see his role on Apple's board of directors further diminish. Google's interest in wireless hardware powered by Android software and its investment in Clearwire's WiMax network pose apparent conflicts with Apple's interest in 3G iPhones. [BusinessWeek] (Photo AP/Michel Euler)

Steve Jobs rejoined Apple as its "interim" CEO in 1997. One of his first moves in May, 1998: Announcing the iMac — a candy-colored computer in "Bondi blue." The "I," flacks told reporters at the time, stood for "Internet, Individual, Instruct, Inform and Inspire." Unless you're Jobs himself, of course. Then the "I" — which has since been attached to the iBook, iPod and iPhone — stands for "I'm much richer than I was 10 years ago."

While in the strictly platonic section of Craigslist, this anonymous Angeleno writes in a tone more suited to casual encounters, what with the desire to "rocket sweet tracks up each other's Zune slots" and the need for "a hearty and steadfast product." I'm willing to bet my Shuffle against your Zune the author is NBC's Jeff Zucker, and that he wasn't being ironic.

A source tells us that "someone who designed part of the iPhone UI, who generally has access to new hardware locked down in a room to play with, " told him that the new iPhone will run on faster 3G networks, as expected; feature new, improved speakers on the bottom; and an improved camera. It will hit stores June 12. Our source warns us: "The person has mixed details before." Our guy puts his friend's trustworthiness at an 8 out of 10.

Late last fall, Vodafone successfully persuaded a German court to bar T-Mobile from selling locked iPhones in Germany, arguing that purchasers of Apple's smartphone should be able to choose any carrier. Don't expect the company to hold to those open-access beliefs now. Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement to become the new service provider for Apple iPhones in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. No details on pricing or whether Vodafone will sell a long-rumored new version of the iPhone that will run on Vodafone's higher-speed 3G networks.

Having dropped Apple's iTunes store in a dispute over pricing, NBC Universal will soon start selling downloads of TV shows like The Office and 30 Rock for its Zune media player. If NBC chief Jeff Zucker manages to scrape some sales out of Microsoft's handheld also-ran, it will be a miracle — and the surest proof yet that content, not hardware, is king. Don't hold your breath. Microsoft's Zune has always seemed like a parody of Apple's iPod. Want to buy songs? Well, first you buy "points" from Microsoft, which you can then exchange for music at some bizarre exchange rate. Nothing about its user interface seems quite right compared to Apple's polish. The system for TV shows is no better. Though Microsoft also makes the Xbox, shows downloaded to a Zune won't play on the videogame console unless you're adept at fiddling with cables. By going with Microsoft, Zucker is betting that technology doesn't matter, design doesn't matter, and market share doesn't matter. He must really believe in his prime-time lineup. (Photo via Fake Steve Ballmer)

A coterie of B-list celebritards including Jenny McCarthy and Darryl Hannah, as well as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, showed up to an opening party for the new Tesla Motors dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood last week. Why LA and not the Valley? "Because it's Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store," Tesla client services manager Jeremy Snyder told the AP. The next dealership will be built in San Carlos, home of Tesla Motors. The $2 million showroom is based on an Apple retail outlet, according to CEO Elon Musk. While the 400-strong waiting list, including the Governator, means you can't actually drive away in a new Tesla roadster until 2009 at the earliest, you can at least ogle the floor models and maybe convince one of the Tesla employees on hand to let you take one for a test drive. Better you behind the wheel than Musk — his driving record's not so clean. (Photo by AP/Mark J. Terrill)

AT&T is offering iPhone owners free Wi-Fi at hotspots managed by the company, including those at megachain Starbucks. But all the system checks is the user-agent string supplied by the iPhone's Safari browser and a phone number from a working iPhone. So anyone with a laptop can simply change their browser's user-agent string, put in the phone number of a friend with an iPhone, et voila! Free Wi-Fi. Why you won't get? The phone number of the cute barista you've been flirting with in vain. (Via Slashdot, photo by Synthesis Studios)

It's hard to count the ways Mark Zuckerberg botched the launch of Facebook's "Social Ads" last fall. From the portentous talk of a once-every-100-years "change" in media, to the privacy brouhaha over Facebook's Beacon technology, Facebook's inexperienced CEO did just about everything wrong. At last, he's starting to get things right. Facebook has begun encouraging advertisers with sponsored groups to shift to Facebook Pages instead. Apple, with the largest sponsored group, has moved 400,000 members of its Apple Students group to be "fans" of the Apple Facebook page instead. It's a big, risky, and potentially costly change.

Out of 250 surveyed companies, 87 percent report owning Apple computers. That's up from 48 percent In 2006. In BusinessWeek's story on Apple's creep into corporate cubicles, Dimension Data CIO Mark Slaga explains how Apple is gaining ground without really trying: "Steve Jobs doesn't need a sales force because he already has one: employees like the ones in my company." (Though, as it happens, Apple is looking for office space in Manhattan's Midtown, which could conceivably house salespeople.)

Forbes has exactly two tones: Sarcastically skeptical, if editors thinks its readers don't own a stock, and breathlessly promotional, if they think they do. "The iPhone: Apple's Magic Wand" is an example of the latter. Its writers hail the "touch-sensitive wonder phone" and say "the broad outlines of Steve Jobs' grand strategy for wireless domination are coming into focus." At least when slavering gadget blogs call it the "Jesusphone," there's a hint that they might be tongue in cheek. The Forbes scribes give no such hint.

Steve Jobs has finally wooed all the major studios, including Fox, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Universal, to sell movie downloads on the day DVDs are released. On Friday, you'll be able to wait a while as American Gangster downloads over your crappy American broadband connection for $14.99. And it will be delivered in lower quality than standard DVDs, without any of those annoying extra features. But it will have Apple's DRM installed with every copy! What finally brought Hollywood to the table?

The inevitable grouping of the major studios under the iTunes roof finally occurred today, when Apple officially announced it had reached agreements with Universal, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., Sony and Lionsgate (along with previous bedfellow Disney) on day-and-date downloads of their new DVD titles. The studios had made most releases available for rental since earlier this year (with catalog titles for sale before that), but this marks the first time users can buy and download new releases on their DVD street dates.