Calling fellow Londoners! The London Evening Standard is reporting that Apple is finally set to open the Covent Garden store on August 7th. The store will be housed in a building that was built in 1877 and feature a glass roof over a courtyard that was originally for delivery by horses. The new location is comprised of four floors, the top two for offices and exhibitions and the bottom two comprising the store itself.

Apple's store on Regent Street is currently the most profitable store in London based on sales per square foot, and if you've ever stepped foot in it, it shows. The Regent Street store is packed from open to close. Sometimes it's so busy, it takes you half an hour just to check out. Getting a Genius Bar appointment takes even longer -- many waiting times are measured in days, not hours. It is hoped that the Covent Garden store, which is located about a mile from the Regent Street store, will take some of the pressure off Apple's first European flagship location. Good luck to Apple with that, because most days it seems like there are as many people in Covent Garden as walking along the Oxford and Regent intersection.

According to the Evening Standard, Apple spared no expense in designing the store and restoring the building. They even reportedly removed a set of brick arches piece-by-piece and then rebuilt the arches exactly as they were on a new floor. Why? Because they wanted to lower the arches by a mere four inches. The Covent Garden store opens at 10AM on Saturday, August 7th. Its normal operating hours will be 9AM-9PM Monday through Saturday and Noon-6PM on Sunday.

Image from ifoapplestore.com.

Sometimes app developers will send me PR releases hoping I review their apps (thus increasing their sales). If I think it's a good app, or that my readers would like it, I do. Many times I don't, however. But I couldn't resist sharing this app with the rest of the world. Why? Not because it's a good app (I haven't even tried it), but because it is the worst-named app in the history of apps: Touch Teen Patti.

When I first read the name images of an app that featured photos the young and innocent teen Patti popped into my head. I imagined the Pedobears on the Chan sites going crazy over this app as they used their fingers to pinch and squeeze young teen Patti's various body parts. It wasn't just the name that caused me to shamelessly snicker like a thirteen year-old either. The PR release went on to contain a number of inadvertent, though sexually ambiguous, double entendres:

• "Teen Patti recently featured in a movie of the same name."
• "Teen Patti can be played with a minimum of 2 players but it's more fun with 4 or more players."
• "The AI will challenge the players to an extreme and test not only your luck but your skills on the table."

If you don't know (or haven't guessed) by now, Teen Patti is actually an innocent Indian card game that's similar to poker. When the devs made it into an iPhone game they decided to (appropriately enough) throw "touch" into the title -- probably much to the alarm of Chris Hanson and to the hopes of Pedobears everywhere. To the dev who wanted me to do a review of this app -- sorry, but I'm not into card games. However, with a name like "Touch Teen Patti," if you want to increase your sales, all you have to do is post a link to your app on 4Chan and your numbers will go through the roof.

Commenters note that "Teen Patti" in Hindi translates as "three cards."

Just two days after Apple posted a video showing antenna issue on Nokia N97 mini, the company has updated the Smartphone Antenna Performance page with a video showing the Motorola Droid X dropping from three to zero signal bars when held in the "death grip." The Droid X, which runs Google's Android OS, is seen as the greatest rival to Apple's wildly popular iPhone 4, so it's no surprise that Apple has gotten around to showcasing that the Droid X, like most smartphones, suffers from attenuation issues.

Apple has posted the video on both the Smartphone Antenna Performance and YouTube pages.

Just days after releasing iBooks 1.1.1, Apple has updated the app again. iBooks 1.1.1 introduced the ability to double-tap an image within a book in order to view it in greater detail and the ability to experience books that include audio and video, among other fixes.

Today's 1.1.2 update only lists one fix: "Addresses a minor issue when updating iBooks." While we can't tell what it's actually fixed (everything was working fine for us), it's nice to see Apple is on top of things. If any of you notice a difference with iBooks 1.1.2 let us know in the comments!

We reported yesterday on an iLife '10 for Dummies book that appeared on Amazon France. The book was set for release on September 23rd, suggesting an updated iLife software release on or around that date. Twenty-four hours later the book's title and cover has been removed from Amazon France, yet "iLife '10" still remains in the book's description.

Today, reader Flo from Germany notified us that she discovered an iWork '10 book on Amazon Germany. The iWork book is titled iWork 10: From Zero to Hero and is set for release on October 10. We've also found the same book on Amazon France. Apple has traditionally released updated versions of iLife and iWork at or around the same time. Given that this is the second book (from a separate publisher) that seems to corroborate that updated iLife and iWork suites are in the works, it's looking increasingly likely that we can expect them by the fall. It's been seventeen months since both iLife '09 and iWork '09 were released in January 2009.

Apple is set to announce their Q3 2010 financial results today. As usual, Apple will stream a webcast of the event at 2:00pm PT/5:00pm ET on Tuesday, July 20, 2010. The main device that is expected to move Q3 results is the iPhone 4, but this will also be the first full quarter of iPad sales.

As always estimates vary, but the average consensus is that Apple sold 8.17 million iPhone units this quarter and 3.3 million iPad units. 9.3 million iPods are expected to have been sold and 3.2 million Macs. Apple is expected to report earnings of $3.11 per share on sales of $14.75 billion for Q3 2010.

That's what's expected, but Apple has typically had a history of blowing past analyst expectations. Will this be another "best non-holiday quarter" in Apple's history? We'll find out at 2:00pm PT. Until then, tell us what you're predicting in the poll.

A reader sent us a link to an iLife '10 for Dummies book on Amazon France. The book is set for release on September 23rd, suggesting an updated iLife software release on or around that date. A Google translation of the book's description doesn't mention any new apps or features and the book's cover clearly lists the five current iLife apps.

For now we are posting this for interest's sake only. While For Dummies is one of the largest how-to publishers in the world, it's not clear if Apple would give them access to pre-release versions of iLife software in order to release a book around the same time the software is released.

iLife was last updated over 17 months ago in January 2009. For years a new iLife release was something you could count on at the beginning of the year, but with Apple abandoning Macworld future release dates seem to be up in the air. One thing that does make sense if the iLife '10 for Dummies book is real, is that Apple would start targeting an iLife update in time for back-to-school sales to give added value to those students buying a new Mac.

Thanks to reader DA360 for the find.

UPDATE: The cover and title has been pulled from Amazon France.

Following on the heels of the iTunes 9.2.1 update that was released yesterday, Apple has updated the iBooks app to version 1.1.1, which includes "substantial performance improvements when reading PDFs." While the new version of iBooks still lacks some lovin' for PDFs that e-books get (in-text Dictionary lookup, notes, etc.), this version makes swiping through PDFs smoother than before. Other improvements to iBooks 1.1.1 include:

• The ability to double-tap an image within a book in order to view it in greater detail.
• The ability to experience books that include audio and video.
• Look up definitions to English words inside books without a specified language.
• An answer to an issue that may have caused some book downloads to not complete.
• The addition of many stability and performance improvements.

The free update for both the iPad and iPhone/iPod touch apps is available now in the App Store.

HardMac is reporting that they've been told by one of their sources that Apple is gearing up to launch a new video format. Apple's supposed new format would be based on the Dirac codec which was developed by BBC Research. The codec is open source and currently supports 1920x1080 resolutions, but Apple plans to up the format to support 4k video – that's a resolution of up to 4096x2160. HardMac points out that many people still do not have 1080p HDTVs at home, much less TVs capable of supporting 4k resolution, but they theorize that Apple would be planning to enter the HDTV market from the high end – at the same time introducing not only stunning hardware, but making Blu-ray discs look archaic with their "low" resolution.

Apple has always maintained the Apple TV is a "hobby" and indeed, they haven't done much to promote the device since its launch in 2007. Still many prominent analysts believe that it's not a matter of "if" but "when" Apple will enter the the home television market full-force. The logical step, it would seem, would be to merge the Apple TV digital receiver into a large LED display and offer an iPod touch-like remote control and Bluetooth keyboard support. Throw in a built-in camera with FaceTime and the world of The Jetsons is one step closer to reality.

After our post that iBooks 1.1 doesn't deliver what Apple promises, Apple has quietly updated the language on its iBooks page to accurately reflect what iBooks 1.1 can do as far as PDF handling goes. Two days ago we pointed out that the copy on Apple's iBooks page read:

Tap a PDF to read it and it fills the screen just like an ebook. You can flip through pages, add bookmarks and highlights, or zoom in for a closer look.

The problem with this was that you couldn't actually flip through PDF pages or highlight them -- those were features of books purchased from the iBooks store, not PDFs.

While some readers thought I was being picky that Apple used the word "flip" instead of "swipe" to move to the next PDF page, Apple seems to have agreed with me. Flipping a page involves the iBooks page-curl eye candy. Swiping a page moves one page off screen as the next appears. As of today, Apple has changed the copy on the iBooks page to accurately reflect how you can interact with PDFs in iBooks 1.1. The new copy reads:

Tap a PDF to read it and it fills the screen just like an ebook. You can swipe through pages, add bookmarks, or zoom in for a closer look.

Here's hoping that Apple does add page flipping and text highlight functionality to PDFs soon. iBooks is shaping up to be a wonderful app and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future.