Halliburton will phase out thousands of Blackberrys in favor of the iPhone over the next two years. According to an internal newsletter obtained by AppleInsider, Halliburton conducted “significant research” and came to the conclusion that “the iOS platform offered the best capabilities, controls and security for application development.”

Apple has hired some surprising executives recently which not only show Tim Cook’s leadership style, but also his vision for Apple’s future.

You come up with an idea for a game, spend time and money developing it, and put it on the App Store with some success only to find that someone has ripped off your hard work and made a copycat. Fortunately, Apple has responded to this problem by removing the copycats from the App Store, much to the delight of the original developers.

Best Buy has sent out a customer survey asking customers about their opinions of a potential Apple iTV or HDTV and whether they would be interested in purchasing one. The description of the Apple HDTV Best Buy gives seems to be a combination of the current Apple TV and a large-screen television.

This year’s Macworld | iWorld 2012 has come to a close, and the official attendance numbers show roughly 25,000 people attended (not including media and exhibitors), 10% more than in 2011. About 40% of them came for the first time, which seems to indicate the transformation of Macworld to the “ultimate iFan event” has worked in reaching a new audience.

Super Bowl XLVI (Giants vs. Patriots) is on Sunday, February 5, 2012, at 3:30pm PT, but what if you can’t wait that long for some football action? Take advantage of Electronic Arts’ sale on Madden 12 for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The iPhone and iPod touch version is only 99¢ and the iPad version is $2.99 available on the App Store.

January 2011 featured many more patent lawsuits. In case you missed them, here’s a handy list of the most important new lawsuits and updates on old ones, including companies such as Samsung, Motorola, Elan Microelectronics and Kodak.

The International Mobile Gaming Awards has announced the thirty games in six categories that are moving to the final round of judging before the 8th annual awards ceremony on March 1st in Barcelona. The winners in each category will receive 100,000 € of advertising from ProSieben Sat1 Games, a leading publisher for international online games, and the best overall game will receive 400,000 € of advertising.

Apple updated Final Cut Pro X to v10.0.3, adding multicam editing, advanced chroma keying, broadcast monitoring, support for XML 1.1, and more. Current owners of Final Cut Pro X can get the update for free from the Mac App Store. For those interested in giving it a try before you buy, there’s a 30-day free trial available.

The Steam Mobile app allows gamers to chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, learn more about the games available on Steam and put them on a wishlist or purchase them, read the latest gaming news, stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales, and more.