Apple and Time Inc. struck a deal, and the per-issue price fell from $4.99 overnight

Here's a window into the economics of magazine publishing.

Monday's Wall Street Journal reports that Time Inc. (TWX) and Apple (AAPL) have reached an agreement to allow subscribers of Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated to get digital versions of their magazines on the iPad for free.

The deal breaks an impasse that dates back to high-level meetings Steve Jobs had with publishers back in February 2010. It also means that thanks to the special Senior Citizen Offer I received in the mail last week, I can read Time Magazine -- a  publication on which I labored for 27 years -- for $0.283 an issue on a free iPad app, down from the $4.99 Time Inc. was charging me the day before. And I get a free Ultronic Multi-Functional Global Clock Radio in the bargain.

What's the catch?

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"It is not thicker, don't believe all the junk that you read."
-- Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller supposed response to reports that the white iPhone 4 is thicker (9 to 5 Mac)

• Some Research In Motion investors reportedly sold shares late last week based on growing general concern that the current BlackBerry product roadmap, including the Torch and PlayBook, won't cut it in this increasingly competitive mobile market, resulting in shares dropping 14% last Friday on the Nasdaq. It's expected that the company will unveil updates to its BlackBerry operating system and BlackBerry Bold smartphone this week. (Wall Street Journal)
• Nearly two weeks after Sony shut down its PlayStation Network (PSN) due to a security breach in which a hacker made off with 77 million users' information, the company announced parts of PSN will be up and running later this week. In addition, execs are offering a small goodwill gesture by offering 30 days free on PlayStation Plus, a service that gives users access to more game content and beta trials. But that doesn't mean they're off the hook: Congress just sent Sony a letter requesting detailed information about the brouhaha. (CNN and New York Times)
• Samsung's first quarter profit dropped a whopping 30% to $2.6 billion due in large part to its TV component business being in the red and semiconductors being less profitable. The company expects the second quarter will also see a profit decline, with earnings picking up later in the year.  (Wall Street Journal) More

Who is Seth Priebatsch? How did his tiny company, based on turning life into a video gaming experience, wind up with a $100 million valuation?

Seth Priebatsch, left

FORTUNE -- As I walked through the front door of SCVNGR in Cambridge, Mass., a $100-million company that makes location-based apps to rival Foursquare and Groupon, a painted canvas of the cover of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" greeted me. Standing beside it was the the man who hung it there, SCVNGR's CEO -- ahem, "Chief Ninja" -- Seth Priebatsch. He was not wearing shoes.

No reason to put on shoes when you're walking around your apartment, which is what the office is to Priebatsch. He spends every night there, pulling sheets out of a desk drawer like he's Don Draper grabbing a fresh Oxford. He doesn't have an apartment, he says. "If I need laundry done, I outsource my laundry to my parents, it's very efficient. They get to borrow the board room, and I don't have to figure out how the hell the laundry machine works."

As you've likely gathered, Priebatsch is 22 years old. He's also worth millions. And not just because he's had a "Projects" folder on a hard drive since he was 8, made tens of thousands of dollars every month on a startup when he was 16, and dropped out of college after freshman year. He's the man in charge because he sensed something three years ago that most of the rest of us did not: that a generation raised on video games would want to keep playing a game in real life. "I found out that basically the real world was essentially the same game as Civilization [an old computer game], just with slightly better graphics, maybe, and slightly slower." More

Someone sold 6 million shares at $348.24 as Apple put the NASDAQ-100 rebalance behind it

Shares fell sharply before Friday's closing bell

Apple investors had been dreading Friday's close since early April, when NASDAQ announced that starting May 2, Apple's share of the NASDAQ-100, one of the world's most heavily traded stock indexes, would be reduced from 20.5% to 12.3%.

All 100 stocks in the index were to be affected by the so-called Special Rebalance, but none as much as Apple (AAPL), whose market cap had grown so large it was starting to make the NASDAQ-100 wobble like badly weighted wheel.

Fund managers could try to anticipate the effect of the 8.16% drop, but the actual realignment of their portfolios had to wait until Friday's close.

The result was a record-breaking orgy of trading, and not just in Apple. According to NASDAQ, a total of 329.11 million shares worth $12.7 billion changed hands in the blink of an eye -- 779 milliseconds to be precise -- at the Closing Cross, the moment when the major exchanges reconcile outstanding orders and set their closing prices.

But the action in Apple began before the closing bell and continued for several hours afterward.

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Once you get past the elaborate poop joke, South Park's Apple send-up is spot on

Source: South Park Studios

Comedy Central didn't do its South Park franchise any favors with the clip it chose to promote the 15th season premier: The keynote where Steve Jobs unveils the HumancentiPad. Jobs send-ups are comedic cliches and the centiPad -- a scatalogical spoof on a Dutch horror film few Americans have seen -- is almost unwatchable.

That's a shame, because the episode is a brilliant parody of all things Apple (AAPL) -- albeit one intended for adult audiences that aren't offended by repeated (and pitch perfect) use of the F word.

We're particularly fond of the Genius Bar scenes -- represented by the first clip posted below the fold. The second clip may be the funniest, but it's not suitable for viewing (or listening to) at work.

You can view the full 22-minute episode here. Flash required.

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Meanwhile, Nokia, Samsung and LG all lost market share, according to IDC

Source: IDC

Apple's 5% slice of the mobile phone pie chart at right, drawn from IDC numbers released Friday, may not look like much, but consider this:

• IDC is counting shipments all over the world, not just the U.S.
• IDC is talking about all mobiles, from cheap feature phones to high-end smartphones.
• Apple's (AAPL) share grew more than twice as fast as upstarts like ZTE.
• Apple's biggest rivals -- Nokia (NOK), Samsung and LG -- all lost market share over the past year.

Below: IDC's spreadsheet and a bar chart showing the five largest manufacturers' respective growth rates.

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Samsung's countersuits were "swift and strong" says an expert

Click to enlarge. Source: FOSS Patents

On Thursday, Samsung filed its fourth response to Apple's charge of "slavish" imitation: A suit in a California federal court alleging infringement by Apple (AAPL) of 10 Samsung communications patents.

"Samsung has mounted a swift and strong response to Apple's initiative," writes Foss Patent's Florian Mueller. "The speed with which Samsung responded to Apple's lawsuit in four different jurisdictions (in three of them within a week, and in the fourth one in less than two weeks) suggests that Samsung expected and, consequently, prepared for this."

Apple's complaint focused on elements of the patented look and feel of the iPhone and iPad that ended up in Samsung devices running Google's (GOOG) Android OS. Samsung, which has a deep intellectual property portfolio of its own, has accused Apple of infringing on patents covering the underlying technology of cellular telephony, such as a particular method for "channel coding and multiplexing in CDMA communication system."

The diagram above is from a Mueller PDF that lays out the legal battlelines step by step as they unfolded. His list of the Samsung patents (with links) is copied below the fold.

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A curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.

• Microsoft's fiscal third quarter figures are out: profits jumped 31% and sales inched up to $16.4 billion, but several analysts noted that revenue from the division that includes the Windows operating system actually fell 4% to almost $4.5 billion, likely due in part to the overall decline in worldwide PC sales and rise of the iPad. (New York Times and eWeek)
• All Things D snagged a rare interview with Steve Jobs, who weighed in on how the iPhone does (and doesn't) use location information. (All Things D)
• Redbox is officially getting into videogames. Starting June 17, the company's 26,000-plus kiosks around the country will offer PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii game rentals for $2 a day. (Engadget)
• Google Talk video chat is here. Over the next few weeks, the Internet giant will roll out an updated Google Talk with video chat, starting with the Nexus S and making its way to tablets and Gmail. Unlike Apple's FaceTime feature which only operates over WiFi, Google's version will run on 3G and 4G connections, too. Check out the demo video below. (VentureBeat) More

These days it's hard to find a spot on the globe without mobile-phone coverage. Even the most remote and inaccessible locations, like Mount Everest (as of October 2010), offer access. So as trekkers head to base camp or the spring climbing season, they, too, will be able to text, call home, or check voicemail at will.  --Tara Moore

TeliaSonera 3G cell tower at Gorakshep, the original Everest base camp, October 2010

17,060 feet is the highest altitude of the base stations for 3G (third-generation) mobile. Video calls have been made as high as 17,388 feet.

$2.1 trillion is the total dollar amount of the global telecom market. Total mobile penetration worldwide is 76%; in Nepal, 85% of the population has mobile access.

486 climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest in 2010. Some 32,000 trekkers went to base camp, up from 14,000 in 2002.

More from Fortune:

• My phone is faster than my cable modem
• AT&T-Mobile deal is big, but how big?
• When machines talk to each other

With America asleep and saturation coverage available on old-fashioned TV, online viewership for the wedding was meager.

So much for today's royal wedding straining the Internet to the breaking point.  Even at the ceremony's height, Internet users around the world only downloaded 5.4 million pages per minute. That makes it only the sixth most popular online news event in history -- right behind the U.S. match with Algeria in the World Cup last June.

The ceremony's timing, nighttime in North America, seemed to be the main factor keeping online viewership down.

Earlier:

Will you be able to stream the royal wedding online? Or will you spend half the wedding staring at an icon that says "buffering"?

While tomorrow's royal wedding may or may not match the TV viewership of Charles and Diana's nuptials, it's a good bet that it will set an all-time record level of Internet traffic for any news event. Which raises this very British concern: Could Will and Kate bollix the Internet?

The networks preparing for the online deluge say no. Most are broadcasters like E!, CNN and the BBC that have arranged for extra online capacity, even though they expect most viewers to tune in on their TVs, not their laptops.  Most (if not all) of the globe's broadcasters are relying on the help of outside "content delivery networks" run by companies such as Akamai (AKAM), Limelight (LLNW), and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) to accommodate the expected flood on online viewers. More