Apple is on the verge of selling the one billionth app in the iTunes App Store. To celebrate the occasion, any customer purchasing an app between 12:01 AM 10-Apr-09 and when the one billionth app is sold will be entered into a contest with the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, or a MacBook Pro. A list of the official contest rules is available on Apple's Web site.

In celebration of its app, iPodRip, having now transfered over one billion songs, The Little App Factory has announced a giveaway contest featuring $1,000 worth of prizes. The contest, running until 01-May-09, will grant nine winners an iPod touch, nano, shuffle, or a $50 gift certificate to the iTunes Store, as well as a free copy of iPodRip. All prizes will also be exchangeable for their retail value's worth of iTunes Store gift certificates. Contestants can enter by email, Twitter, or blogging - or by all three!

Here's how not to run a business that's geared towards taking advantage of the popularity of Apple's iPod shuffle. The owner of an iPod repair shop has pled guilty to fraudulently obtaining and reselling 9,000 iPod shuffles.

Looking for a way to hook up your Mini DisplayPort-equipped Mac to an HDTV? Ars Technica reports that accessories wholesaler Monoprice is offering a $14 Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter. Most interestingly, the HDCP-compliant adapter enables playback of protected HD content on your Mac - such as you might buy from the iTunes Store - to be displayed on an HDTV, something that isn't possible on many monitors.

Want to be an iPhone developer but don't know where to start? You can now sit in on the Stanford University School of Engineering's iPhone development class for free. Stanford will be posting all 10 weeks of the course's lectures on iTunes U, as well as on the CS 193P course Web page. The class, taught by several Apple employees, is normally harder to get into than Studio 54, with 150 students competing for only 60 spots this semester.

Peter Cohen of Macworld does an excellent job laying out the case for why MacHeist inducing their customers to tweet an ad for the MacHeist software bundle constitutes spamming. Twitter Commandment #7: Thou shalt not tweet in my name.

"If you build it, they will come." You can't intentionally compose a hit song, build the next Google, or even make the next top blog. But you can communicate about your passions and your obsessions, and if you do it consistently and compellingly, it could become your living. That's the secret to Internet publishing, and it has worked for us with TidBITS and Take Control.

Apple has announced that the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held 08-Jun-09 through 12-Jun-09 in San Francisco. It's certain that developers will be treated to details of Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 software; the question is if Apple will use WWDC to launch one or both, as many anticipate.

Adam returns to the MacNotables podcast to discuss the recently announced iPhone 3.0 software and how it plays into Apple's goal of having apps sold through the App Store be the golden handcuffs that ensure iPhone user loyalty.

Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has flipped the switch on the Genius sidebar for videos, activating the feature after an almost two week delay, but without requiring that users download a new version of iTunes. The feature had been cited in Apple's release notes for iTunes 8.1 and on their iTunes Web pages, but didn't appear at release. The Genius sidebar will now recommend videos to buy from the iTunes Store based on anonymous user information that's uploaded to Apple and compared to the purchases of other iTunes customers. Like the Genius sidebar for music, this feature can be toggled on or off.

To remain competitive in the financially strapped education market, Apple is keeping an old iMac available for schools. Apple's March 2009 eNews for Education newsletter states, "The white 17-inch iMac continues to be offered starting at $899." That model fell out of the mainstream iMac line in 2007. This is not the first time Apple has offered systems only to schools; the eMac was originally produced for the education market, and was made more generally available only later.

Security researcher Charlie Miller has cut his time to "pwn" (take full control of an operating system via an exploit) from 2 minutes to 10 seconds at the CanSecWest PWN2OWN contest. He was sitting on a previously discovered exploit that he had pre-loaded onto a remote Web site. When a fully patched Mac OS X system connected to the site, he was in charge. He won $5,000 and the exploited MacBook. Miller's find and two other Safari exploits will be turned over to Apple without prior disclosure by TippingPoint, the firm that sponsored the contest.

Ted Landau went through a lot of Option key pressing to figure out how to integrate a new simultaneous dual-band AirPort Extreme Base Station with his older mix of 802.11n (rectangular) and 802.11g (saucer) AirPort base stations. He explains how at MacFixIt.

Apple is now offering high-definition movies for purchase (but not rent) via iTunes. Previously, only the Apple TV provided the means to watch rented (with no option to purchase) HD movies. HD commands a $5 premium over standard-definition purchases, with a little over a dozen titles currently available. (Link goes to the iTunes Store.)

According to The Boy Genius Report, AT&T will start offering the iPhone for sale without a contract, starting 26-Mar-09. The commitment-free 8 GB and 16 GB models will retail for $599 and $699 (that's $400 more than the subsidized price!), and will be available only to existing customers who wish to add a line, purchase a gift, or upgrade (presumably from a different AT&T phone).