Apple is really, really close to hitting 1 billion app downloads across the world, according to its new countdown page. If you download an app, you’ll be enrolled in a contest to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. TechCrunch is holding its own contest in honor of this occasion. Whoever guesses when it will hit one billion, and is closest in minutes and seconds will get free TechCrunch T-shirt. Leave the guesses in comments; we’ll contact the winner.

Apple also featured the all-time top 20 apps, both paid and free.

Top 20 All-Time Free Apps:

1. Facebook

2. Google Earth

3. Pandora Radio

4. Tap Tap Revenge

5. Shazam

6. Pacman Lite

7. Backgrounds

8. Touch Hockey

9. Labyrinth

10. Flashlight

11. Urbanspoon

12. Movies

13. iBowl

14. Lightsaber Unleashed

15. SOl Free Solitaire

16. MySpace Mobile

17. Virtual Zippo Lighter

18. The Weather Channel

19. BubbleWrap

20. Remote

Top 20 All-Time Paid Apps:

1. Crash Banidcoot

2. Koi Pond

3. Enigmo

4. Bejeweled 2

5. iBeer

6. Moto Chaser

7. Pocket Guitar

8. Flick Fishing

9. Tetris

10. Texas Hold Em

11. Super Monkey Ball

12. Pocket God

13. Cro-Mag Rally

14. Ocarina

15. Fieldrunners

16. iFart Mobile

17. Touchgrind

18. iHunt

19. iShoot

20. Monopoly

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

(Via TechCrunch.)

More people are watching video online than ever, with the percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewing online video now topping 75%.

What’s this mean to you?

In a few years, your television will be more like your computer than a traditional television.

comScoretoday released July 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month.

Other notable findings from July 2008 include:

• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

Google Sites Maintains Dominant Position

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed (representing a 44 percent share of the online video market), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 446 million videos (3.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 282 million (2.5 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 269 million (2.4 percent). Hulu ranked eighth with 119 million videos, representing 1 percent of all videos viewed.

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (92.1 million), who watched an average of 55 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.9 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.6 million) and Microsoft Sites (32.6 million).

(Via Podcasting News.)

At issue is the case of Kane Kramer, who allegedly invented technology that drives Apple (and other) music players 30 years ago – but hasn’t seen any return on his investment.

It appears Kramer’s claim to have invented some element of the music player was borne out by Apple in its case against Burst.com. Apple flew Kramer to California to give evidence during that trial – Kramer could prove prior art in the case.

The UK inventor put together a concept called the IXI in 1979. A digital music player, the original conceit stored only 3.5 minutes of data on its chip, was credit card sized and held a rectangular screen along with a central menu button.

While Kramer was able to patent the invention then, 1988 saw his company fail to secure the £60,000 needed to renew the patent across 120 countries “and the technology became public property”, the Mail reports.

While he no longer has claims, he was able to help Apple defend itself against Burst.com. He told the Mail: “To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all.”

Kramer is negotiating with Apple for compensation from the copyright that he owns on the drawings, but has received only a consultancy fee so far – despite Apple’s billions of dollars in the bank.

The British inventor last year had to sell his house and move his wife and three children into rented accommodation

(Via Engadget.)