Year: 2010

On Friday, Dec. 10, you can get a free iPhone 3GS at Best Buy. Well, it’s “free” when you sign up for a two-year plan with AT&T.

Also, note that Best Buy is offering the iPhone 3GS, not the latest iPhone. That would be, of course, the iPhone 4.

Apple has begun extending the length of song samples from 30 seconds to 90 seconds at the iTunes Store in the U.S. Many samples of the site’s top-selling singles — such as The Black Eyed Peas’ “The Time (Dirty Bit)” and Coldplay’s “Christmas Lights,” — are available in the longer format, reports “CNET” (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20025106-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20).

Graeme Devine, who joined Apple’s iPhone Game Technologies division last year, tells the “Kotaku” site (http://kotaku.com/5708642/apple-loses-its-iphone-game-guru) that his last day at the company was Friday. He says he left the company to return to game development, concentrating specifically on the iPhone and iPad.

“My job there was basically to make gaming on the iOS devices fantastic,” Devine said. “Basically that meant looking at the technologies involved and making sure the software played well with the hardware, to look at upcoming hardware/API and say ‘Yup, that is a good thing’.”

Despite a massive media frenzy for tablets such as the iPad, the latest research from Broadbandgenie.co.uk has shown old favorites such as smartphones and laptops are still just as high on consumer Christmas wish lists in 2010.

Global market research firm, Harris Interactive (http://www.harrisinteractive.com) has released the 2010 results of the first annual Youth EquiTrend study, which asks 8-24 year olds to rate between 98 and 125 brands on several key elements of brand equity including familiarity, quality and purchase consideration. Apple’s iPod ranked number five overall.

The top 10 brands, based on equity, are M&Ms, Google, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Oreo’s, iPod, Target, Subway, Hersey’s Milk Chocolate, Doritos and Pixar.