That’s an 84 percent increase from its brand value in 2010, propelling the trendy tech company above other tech giants, like Google, which dropped 2 percent to $111 billion. Here’s how the top 10 companies shake out:

1. Apple: $153.3 billion
2. Google: $111.5 billion
3. IBM: $100.8 billion
4. McDonalds: $81 billion
5. Microsoft: $78.2 billion
6. Coca-Cola: $73.8 billion
7. AT&T: $69.9 billion
8. Malboro: $67.5 billion
9. China Mobile: $57.3 billion
10. GE: $50.3 billion

The ranking system was developed by Millward Brown Optimor and analyzes the world’s leading brands and the world’s economic and competitive dynamics that influence value fluctuations. BrandZ focuses on companies that generate revenue and profits through the sale of goods and services directly to consumers or business customers, which is used to establish the value of each company’s brand, and not the company itself.

The 100 most valuable brands increased by 17 percent year-over-year to $2.4 trillion, compared to a 13 percent increase in 2010, BrandZ said. As for Apple, its 84 percent spike was the fifth-highest jump, but paled in comparison to Facebook, which grew by 246 percent to $19 billion.

But when you’re the man who started it all, maybe you can acclimate more quickly. Most recently, he purchased the LTE-capable HTC Thunderbolt, and before that, he used a Droid X and an iPhone 4. Now, that iPhone 4 is in the hands of his grandson, who we’re sure has a ton of awesome hand-me-downs. We’re pretty sure he has a cellphone contract with every major carrier in the States — how else would you try out so many products?

But either way, it’s good to hear that the founder of the cellphone still adores what he founded. That’s a lot of years to grow tired of cellular telephony, and it’s pretty telling when the person that started it is still enamored with it.

Sohaib Athar, the man who accidentally livetweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden has been hacked, he confirmed via Twitter.Athar, who goes by the Twitter handle @ReallyVirtual, said early this morning that his blog, which was linked via his Twitter page, had been infected with malware. Websense, for its part, said in a blog post that the poorly detected malware used a “blackhole exploit kit” to serve the malware. Not unexpectedly, Websense said that its customers were protected.

“Anyone going to this page would also load content from the malicious URL above, and the Blackhole Exploit Kit would then try to use several exploits to automatically install malware on the PC,” the firm wrote. “The malware that the drive-by-download attempts to install is a fake system tool named ‘WindowsRecovery’ that claims to have found problems on the victim’s computer.”
The malware then would have hidden all the files and folders in the user’s hard drive and desktop – then offer to restore them for a price, which a Websense graphic indicated was $79.50.
It wasn’t clear from Athar’s account whether he had successfully removed the malware from his blog or taken it down.
According to The New York Times, credit for the first leak of the raid on bin Laden went to Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld and a former Navy intelligence officer. His tweet, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn,” was credited by The Times as the first to report the news.
Urbahn later tweeted, “Don’t know if its true, but let’s pray it is.” He also speculated on the means that bin Laden was killed: “Highly unlikely that if we had credible info on UBL’s location that Hellfires from a drone would be the weapon of choice.”

In addition to the human drama on display – Obama leans forward intently, Clinton covers her mouth – we also know that both Clinton and Biden use HP notebooks. HP notebooks seem to surround the table; Clinton is definitely working on one, while Biden appears to have one in front of him, too.

Wagner James Au, who called our attention to this on Twitter, commented via Twitter: “Real life versus ’24′: When President monitors a counter-terrorist operation IRL, no one uses a Mac.”

oth Biden and Clinton appear to have different (possibly more secure?) models of HP notebooks than the laptop in the foreground. The foreground model could be an HP Elitebook 6930p, a 2008 business PC with the distinctive column of buttons on the right hand side of the keyboard. Later models in the Elitebook series appear to have tweaked the hinge colors a bit, however, which seems to rule those out.

Secretary Clinton also definitely is using an HP notebook, but apparently a different model. The keyboard is partially obscured by a photograph that the White House obscured for reasons of national security, we presume. And the coffee cup hides what could be double USB port bay, but it’s difficult to tell. It’s not inconceivable that Clinton could have asked for a thinner, lighter model to lug around to affairs of state.

Biden’s HP notebook is distinctive because of two prominently placed stickers on the lid. Does the yellow one say “Classified?” At the least, we’d say.

As for President Obama, he appears to be the person seated who doesn’t have a laptop in front of him – not even his prized BlackBerry.

“There is no e-reader that supports what we found these students doing,” study co-author Alex Thayer, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering said, according to a report on the study published Monday by the University of Washington’s Office of News and Information.

“It remains to be seen how to design one. It’s a great space to get into, there’s a lot of opportunity.”

Researchers at the University of Washington said that seven months into the study, less than 40 percent of the 39 first-year graduate students they monitored were regularly doing their academic reading using the Kindle DX—the e-reader used for the UW study.

Some complaints about the Amazon device were expected, according to the study’s authors. For instance, the students wanted more support for note-taking, checking references and viewing figures.

But the researchers also found that the Kindle DX “also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues such as the location on the page and the position in the book to go back and find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.”

Another “drawback of the Kindle DX was the difficulty of switching between reading techniques, such as skimming an article’s illustrations or references just before reading the complete text.”

Students monitored in the study found ways to compensate for deficiencies in their e-readers, such as using them in conjunction with a computer for checking up on references or scribbling notes on a piece of paper in lieu of doing the same in a textbook’s margins.

“Most e-readers were designed for leisure reading—think romance novels on the beach,” said study co-author Charlotte Lee, a UW assistant professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. “We found that reading is just a small part of what students are doing. And when we realize how dynamic and complicated a process this is, it kind of redefines what it means to design an e-reader.”

Thayer is scheduled to present the study’s findings at next week’s at Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, B.C., according to the UW report.

So the guys at BGR got their early hands on the upcoming iOS 4.3.3 for iDevices, this update includes the fowling changes.

• Fix for the location database backup and reduced the size of the location database.
• If the Location Services are turned off it will entirely delete location database.
• Battery life improvements and other iPod bug fixes.

You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook Fanpage to keep yourself updated on all the latest Gadget news.

Another good news for the people waiting for the low-level SHAtter exploit based tool Greenpois0n (GP), p0sixninja one of the developer for the GP confirmed that it the tool will hactivate your iPhone 4 so u don’t need to worry about the emergency lock screen and stuck on iTunes activation screen in his recent tweet p0sixninja confirmed this ability.

@p0sixninja will gp hactivate ip4.. Please answer. i need to know

@caiolbarros yes

There is still no progress reported or estimated time of release for the Greenpoison so wait and watch for the release

Google just added Google Goggles for its iPhone mobile app. This application lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web. It’s ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe in words or the places products which you dont know and want information. There’s no need to type or speak your query – all you have to do is open the app, snap a picture, and wait for your search results.
Google Goggles works better with certain types of queries. Try taking pictures of books & DVDs, landmarks, logos, contact info, artwork, businesses, products, barcodes, or text; it can recognize up to three items at a time. Currently, it’s not so good when taking pictures of animals, plants, cars, furniture, or apparel.
For the best results when taking pictures, hold your phone in “left landscape” mode. Google Goggles is available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 devices only.
[Via Google]

Apple recently relaxed its app store approval policy and now we are seeing many apps which were not allowed in the past or removed from the app store. One of the first app that appear after this new policy change was google voice but here is a shocking news for idevices owners, Apple just approved BitTorrent-based torrent managing app called IS Drive.

From the App’s official page:

This app allows you to check and manage downloads in your ImageShack Drive account. For downloaded videos, you can even view thumbnails.

IS Drive is available for download now at $4.99 from the App Store

Sn0wbreeze 2.0 was released earlier today. It brings support for a bunch of devices running on iOS 4.1. These include:

• iPod touch 1G (Must be jailbroken on any firmware version)
• iPod touch 2G (Non-MC Model, Must be jailbroken on any firmware, if not, then use iREB from here)
• iPod touch 2G (MC Model, must be on iOS 3.1.2. Does not need to be jailbroken on 3.1.2)
• iPod touch 3G (Must be previously jailbroken on 3.1.2)
• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G (Must be jailbroken on any firmware, if not, then use iREB from here)
• iPhone 3GS new bootrom (Must be previously jailbroken on 3.1.2)
• iPhone 3GS old bootrom (Must be already jailbroken. If you are jailbroken using Spirit or JailbreakMe, install Spirit2Pwn from http://repo.woowiz.net.
• 

  Like PwnageTool for Mac, you can use Sn0wbreeze 2.0 on Windows to build custom firmware files without upgrading the baseband.

  Except for iPod touch 4G, Sn0wbreeze supports all previous generation of iPod touches, including iPod touch 3G and iPod touch 2G (MC Model). If your iPod touch meets the criteria listed above, then you can jailbreak it on iOS 4.1 using Sn0wbreeze 2.0.

  

  UPDATE 1: Sn0wbreeze 2.0.1 has been released which fixes iTunes Error 37 when restoring to custom iOS 4.1 firmware. The download link for Sn0wbreeze posted below has been updated for version 2.0.1.

Technorati : Jailbreak, MC Model, Sn0wbreeze, iOS 4.1, iPod touch 2G, iPod touch 3G