A heck of a lot of people got an iPod Touch for Christmas. Data tallying usage of the Touch's Web browser, shows a massive spike on Christmas day, according to MacRumors, as people tested their new toys and bought junk from the App Store. iPhone App sales boomed on Christmas, says Silicon Alley Insider. Some developers sold quadruple their normal numbers. On Christmas Day, 38,927 people purchased iFart Mobile, which Edible Apple describes as "a $.99 novelty iPhone app that plays a wide variety of fart sounds" "A Christmas iFart explosion!" proclaims Venture Beat. "Wow," blogs JoelComm, iFart's developer. "I want to say "thank you" to everyone." Concludes 148Apps: "No one knows how long the increased sales will continue, but this is a much deserved present for these independent developers." 

TeleRead says all it's "an obvious positive" for supporters of e-Books, too. Gadget Lab says the sales are fine but suggests "the real eye-opener is that, whereas before everybody carried a music player in their pocket, soon everyone will have a computer in their pockets." It will help fart-sound entrepreneurs, e-book lovers and others that Wal-Mart just started selling the iPhone 3G. We'd say "as rumored," but a bogus rumor had Wal-Mart selling a $99 iPhone. Nope: it's $197 and $297 instead of $199 and $299. Apple "relented," says Blogging Stocks, and allowed the retailer to take its usual "price ending in XX7" approach but apparently did not allow any discount on the iPhone beyond that." (AT&T now is selling refurbished models for $99.)

And even beyond that, online retailers did well during the holidays, avoiding the woes of brick-and-mortar stores. ReadWriteWeb says U.S. shoppers spent almost double the amount of money online during the last weekend before Christmas compared to last year. 'Some of these gains were probably due to the severe snowstorms all around the country that prevented shoppers from even getting to the mall." Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog notes that Amazon's list of top-selling holiday computers was dominated by stripped-down netbooks, most under $500. Observes GigaOm: "As they say -- the race to the bottom has begun."