The Apple iPhone 4 was named Best Mobile Device at the Global Mobile Awards 2011 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The phone was praised by judges, and according to Apple Insider, the judges said they picked the iPhone 4 because it has a “great screen, sharp design, fantastic materials, and phenomenal ecosystem for app developers. In a tight race, the iPhone 4 builds on the success of its predecessors to set the pace for smartphones.”

No surprise here. The iPhone 4 is clearly the best mobile device on the planet.

Among the many services Apple is working on are:

- A live video-streaming service like Ustream
- A location-based check-in system like Gowalla or Foursquare
- A geo-tagging system codenamed "Tokens" that tags real-world locations, like Facebook Places on steroids.

More MobileMe rumors. I hope they are true. MobileMe is mostly great (iDisk kinda sucks), but not worth the price.

Picture-sharing service Instagram (driven only by the popularity of its free iOS app) has hit a whopping two million users already.

I've been using this service since the day it came out, and these results don't surprise me at all. They launched with an app that was better than any of the similar paid apps, and they've continued to improve it.

Steve Jobs justified the in-app content requirement as somewhat of a fair finder's fee: "Our philosophy is simple -- when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing. All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.

This will be painted as a black and white issue by most of the pundits. Most will say it's Apple being greedy, and you'll find the word "evil" in a lot of those stories (which is laughable). And a few will defend Apple's position, with the standard, it's what's best for the users.

In reality, it's both, and it's the end of the free ride for publishers. Up until now, publishers could release a free app (Apple makes nothing, despite supplying the tools and the customers) and then sell their content outside of the app. I was never interested in the Kindle or buying e-books from Amazon, but now I buy Kindle books for my iPhone. Apple's retina display and app model are the reasons I buy from Amazon, so is it unfair for them to ask for a cut?

Pandora is another great example. Pandora was a popular service before the iPhone, and Apple shouldn't get a cut of their existing subscriptions. But if someone downloads the app from iTunes, and then decides to subscribe from within the app, it's perfectly reasonable for Apple to ask for their share.

This won't be an issue long, because the publishers are going to find out quickly, that they will sell more product this way, and the increased sales will more than make up for Apple's cut.

Path received a lot of attention when it launched because of the people behind the product, but it was met with a lot of negativity.

I loved the idea of a simple, private social network, but it was missing too many features to be useful. My two biggest complaints were: the lack of comments, and the inability to use pictures from the camera roll. They corrected the camera roll issue almost immediately, and added the ability to send comments by SMS (ridiculous idea).

Path has now added real-time comments, and they work great. The app's functionality now lives up to the great concept and beautiful design. If you were underwhelmed by Path, now is the time to try it again.

Download Path for free on iTunes

Priority Inbox now works on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) devices. I tested it, and it works great. But I still prefer Apple's iOS mail app.

Thereʼre two camps when it comes to the topic of Apple sans Jobs. One camp is optimistic. Apple is comprised of great people from top-to-bottom, and because the company has so much depth, it would continue to be successful well into the future - particularly because it's believed that it has a set of products and services in the pipeline that will carry it for the next two-to-five years.

The other camp is not so optimistic. They believe Apple will never be the same company without Jobs. The thinking goes something like this: Apple equals Steve Jobs. Without Jobs, there is no Apple. As many great people as they may have, without a leader to steer the ship, there will be no vision, no navigator.

A great read. Well written and researched.

With only a small unit market share, Apple has managed to achieve its remarkable profits by focusing on the high-priced and rapidly-growing smartphone market while doing so at significant profit margins. That 4% unit share consequently translates to over 20% of industry revenue and just over 50% of industry profits.

This is why Apple is sweating Android's market share lead.

Gary Ng and Justin Luey from iPhoneInCanada.ca discuss the latest iOS (iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV) news on Episode 24 of The iPhone Podcast.

We are back with Episode 24 of The iPhone Podcast. We will be releasing a show every Friday from now on. Thanks again for listening, and your patience.

If you enjoy the show, can you please take a few minutes to rate us in iTunes -- and if you really like us -- please submit a review. iTunes rankings are based on recent ratings and reviews, so we need your help.

This is the first "official" Verizon iPhone commercial. It was posted to the Verizon YouTube channel earlier this evening. It's very different from anything we've seen from Apple or AT&T. If there was any doubt about how badly Verizon wanted this phone--there isn't now.

This is a big, big win for Apple and Verizon. Your move Google.