Apple, based in Cupertino, California, increased revenue at its stores by 2.5 percent in the first six months of the year to $3 billion as the rest of the retail industry suffered. During the same period, sales at all U.S. retailers fell 9.2 percent compared with the first half of 2008, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

Retail sales in New York City have fallen 8 percent to 10 percent from comparable 2008 levels, according to the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book business survey published July 29.

Even in a slumping economy, you can't go wrong when you just build great products.

Thanks to Nils for sending me this

My blog’s visitors certainly could tell the difference: I’ve been blogging much more frequently. And that’s really the only useful test of a blogging platform. Most of us don’t buy a car because we enjoy tinkering with cars; we buy them because we want to get somewhere.

Years of building and maintaining my Wordpress blog have resulted in my learning a lot about Wordpress and getting a lot of grease under my fingernails. Weeks of using Posterous has resulted in a media-rich blog with several posts per week. Tell me which service is more powerful.

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"Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn't stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down."9:35 AM Aug 20th from web

    

"Love this Mrs. Dash. The bitch can make spices... Jesus, Joni (my mom) it's a joke. I was making a joke! Mrs. Dash isn't even real dammit!"9:28 AM Aug 19th from web

    

"The dog is not bored, it's a fucking dog. It's not like he's waiting for me to give him a fucking rubix cube. He's a god damned dog."10:43 AM Aug 18th from web

    

"They serve Jim Beam on airplanes. Tastes like piss. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, because you drink shit. I don't."9:23 AM Aug 17th from web

    

"My flight lands at 9:30 on Sunday...You want to watch what? What the fuck is mad men? I'm a mad man if you don't pick me the hell up."

http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

It's clear that what's driving the Posterous team -- a group of Y-Combinator alums who raised $725,00 last year -- isn't a fetish for email. It's a die-hard interest in unification and usability.

In 2001, geneticist Ying-Hui Fu and colleagues identified a mutation in a gene called Per2 that appeared to cause familial advanced sleep-phase syndrome (FASPS). People who have this condition sleep a normal 8 hours, but they go to bed earlier than most people, retiring at 6 or 7 in the evening and waking at 3 or 4 in the morning.

I've always been an 8 hour per night sorta guy, and I definitely steer late. Getting up at 9 or even 10 is usually tough for me.

Glad to know that people who get up early without trouble are the odd ones!

Thanks to Helena for the link.

Wi-Fi-enabled CL65 from Samsung

If the average digital camera has become a bit ho-hum, Samsung Electronics America may refresh your opinion. The company Monday introduced three new cameras, one with Wi-Fi and two with touch LCD screens — one on the front and one in the traditional rear position.

The megapixel wars were stupid. How many megapixels can we pack into a tiny camera with a tiny sensor?

Now that that's over, camera companies seem to be innovating again. This Samsung is pretty sweet. Connecting a camera to your computer was always the bottleneck to posting online.

The FinePix F70EXR also seems pretty great, with a focus on image quality in a small package

Enjoy unlimited travel with our All-You-Can-Jet Pass! For just $599* you can take JetBlue anywhere you like, as often as you like, from September 8 to October 8, 2009. Use your All-You-Can-Jet Pass for business, for pleasure, to visit your favorite cities or to meet with a client. You might as well just do it all! With more than 50 cities to choose from, and for just $599, it's a deal you can't pass up.

I love to travel. But over the years I've realized that the key to a great trip is *minimizing* travel time, and maximizing time spent wherever you end up.

Instead of trying to squeeze a destination into just a couple days, go someplace and really experience it. Instead of hitting 10 cities in Europe, focus on 2 or 3.

One of the best trips I ever took was a roadtrip from San Francisco to Vancouver. It was 2.5 weeks long, and I had no schedule, no reservations. I stopped at places I wanted to see, and left when I was done with them. Compare that to people who want to drive cross country in a week. I'm like, what's the point?

It was an amazing trip, and I was glad to have experienced such a great part of the country. I'd love to do the same through the Yellowstone region one day.

Apple is again offering an antiglare matte display option on the 15" MacBook Pro. As with the matte display for the 17" MacBook Pro, the option costs $50.

Unibody design, 8 hour battery life, and now a matte screen... I'm very tempted to get a new Macbook Pro. Problem is, my current machine is running perfectly well. Can't justify the upgrade yet!