I have a love-hate relationship with emoticons. On the one hand, they allow you to express mood or your intended meaning in written communication. It can imbue your otherwise neutral statement with feeling. On the other hand, it demonstrates laziness. Why bother writing something clearly, when you can just stick a happy face at the end? :)

Whatever your opinion about emoticons, it’s clear they are here to stay. Simple emoticons combining colons, semicolons and parentheses or other letters have developed into a language unto itself. But if you want to take it a bit further and spice up your iMessages and texts, Emoji is ready and waiting for you.

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If you’ve been living outside of the US, Canada, and the other “lucky” countries that got the iPhone 4S already, we have good news and bad news: The good news is that you can probably get your own iPhone 4S today, but the bad is that you may have to pay more than we do here in the colonies. And I mean a lot more.

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Facebook’s opened up their new Timeline profile styling to the whole world, and as usual, no one really likes it. Rather quick on the uptake, this time, it’s also rolled out the new Timeline to iOS within the week, with version 4.1 of Facebook for iOS.

What’s new

Yay! Timeline! You can see a snippet of mine on my iPhone above. What’s odd is that it looks strikingly similar to my new favorite app, Path, who beat them to the release punch by about 3 weeks. If you haven’t installed it on your phone, go do it. Right now. I’ll wait right here.

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Ever heard the term “The One That Got Away”? Well, just imagine that your One That Got Away was the CEO of the biggest company in America, and you’ll know how Diane Keaton feels about letting Steve Jobs slip through her fingers.

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Zynga, reigning dreadlords of the social media game universe, have extended yet another talon into a new frontier: ForestVille is now released for iOS.

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Remember Jetpack Joyride? Well that’s a stupid question as it’s leading our community poll for the best app of 2011. Anyway, if you still haven’t experienced the awesomeness that is this never-ending score chaser (I’m currently up to a distance of 4,700m), then here’s your chance. It’s now free. Zip. Nada. Nothing.

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Making utilitarian use of iOS’ Notification Center has previously been reserved for those who brave the jailbreaking process. Now though, a new app, Quickpick, available in the App Store, allows you to create shortcuts for a number of useful tasks, right from the Notification Center.

Quickpick takes advantage of the availability of custom URLs in iOS, making the app virtually endless with regards to possibilites. Things like tweeting or making phone calls are just the tip of the iceberg.

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I’m sitting here watching some manly football and working on a project when on comes a commercial. I stop what I’m doing because I hear the telltale Apple voice command “beep beep” sound. My 4 year old stops what he’s doing because he sees Santa. Then we both sit motionless with a silly grin on our faces as we watch Apple’s newest iPhone 4S commercial. Even if you don’t love the iPhone you probably would love this commercial.

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