Mark Gurman

Alongside the launch of the iPad Air tomorrow, Best Buy is holding some special price promotions for some MacBook and older iPad models. The company says that it will provide $100 discounts on all MacBook Air models on Friday and Saturday. The offer will be available both via the company’s online store and in its chain of physical retail stores. If you don’t absolutely need one of these devices this week it is best to hold tight and watch 9to5Toys (on Twitter too!) as we expect even heavier discounts throughout the holiday season.

The company will also offer a discount on the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro. Currently, the Best Buy Online Store offers the $1499 configuration with 8GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive for $1349, but the company will take off an extra $150 ($1249) for Friday and Saturday. Like with the MacBook Air deal, this offer is applicable both in-store and online. Keep in mind, that for $50 more, you can get a thinner, lighter Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, but that will come with substantially less storage and half the RAM.

In addition to the price-cuts on Macs, buyers of the fourth-generation iPad with Retina display at Best Buy stores will get a $25 gift card. With the iPad Air coming in at $499, this older iPad model will cost $449 before the gift card. Also, the wireless Jawbone Jambox speaker system will be cut at Best Buy from $149 to $199. The speaker deal will run from Friday until Saturday this weekend, and the iPad 4 deal is already live.

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Best Buy has noted on its website that between today (Thursday) and October 7th (next Monday), it will be offering $50 gift cards with iPhone 5c purchases. The offer is exclusive to purchases within Best Buy’s physical retail stores via on-location purchases or the in-store pickup option. The gift card will not be applicable to the iPhone 5c purchase, but can be used for future transactions at Best Buy. If you return the iPhone 5c, you must also return the gift card, according to Best Buy. Best Buy is currently not running any promotions for the (still constrained) iPhone 5s.

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Popular speed-reading application ReadQuick for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch has gone on sale for 40% off for the next 24 hours. The app is normally $4.99 (universal) on the App Store, and it is now $2.99 for this discount period. The application connects to services such as Pocket and Instapaper to show words of articles on your device’s screen at a fast speed. In our full review of ReadQuick, we found the app to be intuitive and work very effectively for reading quickly through articles.

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Google today made its QuickOffice suite for both iOS and Android free to use with a Google Account. QuickOffice is a cross-platform document editor that can manage and edit Microsoft Office documents. The app is downloadable for free on both iTunes and Google play for no charge. Better yet, Google says that those who login to the updated app by September 26th will receive a 10GB storage boost in Google Drive for the next two years.

The makers of ChargeCard of released a new product: the ChargeKey. As can be seen in the image above, the accessory allows you to keep a USB Lightning charger on your key ring. One end plugs into any USB port, while the other plugs into Lightning devices like the iPhone 5 and later, fifth-generation iPod touch, recent iPads, and the latest iPod nano. The ChargeKey runs for $25 and it is sold in limited quantities.

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As noted on 9to5Mac, 1Password 4, a popular password and security management app for iPhone and iPad, has dropped to $7.99 (typically $17.99). The sale lasts until August 16th. The sale is being held in order to encourage upgrades from 1Password 3 as the previous 1Password versions will soon be losing Dropbox support due to API changes. See our full app review here. 

In its weekly ad, retailer Target is heavily promoting big gift card bonuses for those who purchase an iPhone 5, iPad with Retina Display, iPad mini, 5th-generation iPod touch, or Apple TV. Here are the deals:

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Campaign image from June 1

Tomorrow, Best Buy will reboot its “free iPhone 5” with iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S trade-in campaign. Best Buy ran this special for one-day earlier this month, and the company said that that day was its most successful device trade-in day ever. Here’s how the program works:

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkxj10rs6oo]

ContactMonkey is a new service that intuitively allows users to create an online version of their contact and social media information. The purpose of the website is to replace the traditional paper card with a URL you can hand out to people. For example, if someone wants my contact information, I can give them my www.contactmonkey.com/username instead. Having your contact card online, versus a paper card, has many benefits. These include direct clickable access to forms of connection – from the person you gave your link to – and the ability for the person to quickly download and add your information to their address book.

As you can see above, ContactMonkey makes it very easy to download someone’s contact information – typically through the vCard format – into many services. With services like iCloud and Outlook, contact information is spread to all of your devices upon download, making ContactMonkey all the more handy over paper business cards. ContactMonkey allows users to add all sorts of information including the basic contact card information, social networks, emails, messaging client, and a note, just like on paper cards. You can also add a profile photo to your card and even create a QR code that people can scan to access your digital address book information.

Users can even track card visitor statistics and information, and users can even see who follows changes to their cards. These are some of the many benefits of having your card digitally, rather than on paper. ContactMonkey comes in two flavors: a free version with all of the aforementioned features (and more), and what the company calls a “white label” version for businesses. This white label version allows users to place their company logo on their accounts, similar to what companies have for the paper business cards they would usually deploy. This white label version costs $3 per month. The service works with companies (depending on their amount of staff) for special price plans. Individuals and businesses can sign up here. Companies who sign up with our link get their first month free, individuals are always free.

When the current iPod nano form factor was announced in September of 2010, Steve Jobs said it’d make a perfect watch. Over a year later, in October 2011, Apple rolled out a new iPod nano software update that takes this concept to the next level. This update not only included an easier-to-navigate user interface experience, but included several new clock faces. Taking advantage of the prospects of what an iPod nano watch could mean, companies like LunaTik have been rolling out bands for the iPod nano.

LunaTik is the premier iPod nano watchband company, jumping into the market early on with a Kickstarter campaign. Now they are ever larger and are launching some incredible iPod nano watch band products. I had the opportunity to review one of their premier designs: the LunaTik LYNK blackout. Read the full review after the break:

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After using an iPhone as my primary smartphone for the last few years, I’ve finally found a phone that I feel I can switch to: the Nokia Lumia 800. Read on for the full review.

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In celebration of being on the App Store for three years, Future Tap has made their popular Where To? application only $0.99 until Sunday. This is a  66% discount from the application’s normal price.

Where To? makes it incredibly easy to locate the closest steakhouse, bank branch, billiard club or anything else you may be looking for, at the drop of a hat! Finally you can find local businesses without any typing, using a slick, intuitive user experience.

The app is available on the App Store.

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