Since the beginning of the year, Apple shares have more than doubled from $90.75 on Jan. 2 to almost $186 today.

Google has done about half that performance, while Microsoft has done one-third.

But that’s apparently not enough, according to Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid, who has raised his price target on Apple to $210 from $180.

BoomTown is getting dizzy.

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BoomTown has already gotten some very good submissions from readers for a contest to come up with a good moniker for the tablet device Apple is allegedly working on.

In a post earlier today, some of my ideas included: iTablet, iPad, iAmnotanetbook and iAmakindlekiller.

And here are some of the user-generated ideas, via Twitter mostly, and my Paula Abdul-inspired comments in reaction to them.

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BoomTown is certainly going to be one of the many-so-many who will immediately fork over whatever it takes to get my mitts on the upcoming tablet device from Apple.

And that’s why, according to a new report from Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster–who is monk-like in his devotion to writing down every scrap he can about whatever Apple HQ in Cupertino, Calif., deigns to release–it’s going to be raining money down on the company, just like manna from heaven.

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Adding the final leg of its new strategy to reinvigorate AOL, the Time Warner online unit said it was buying two small local start-ups, Patch Media and Going.

Each acquisition–which focus on hyperlocal community news (Patch) and events (Going)–is small, about $10 million.

Ironically, local has previously been a big arena for AOL, which launched its Digital City unit with great fanfare more than a decade ago. AOL still runs Digital City, as well as its CityGuide listing offering.

But, in a move that will surely be scrutinized, Patch is a company whose principal investor has been AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong. AOL declined to say how much he had invested in the company, but sources said it was less than $5 million.

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Hey, did you hear that Apple is launching some sort of new notebook thingamabob today?

If you didn’t, it can’t be because the Apple-product-release-hyper-hype cycle let you down.

AllThingsD.com’s Johnny Apple-blogger John Paczkowski of Digital Daily will be there, of course, posting at the media-clogged launch, as it happens, and contributing mightily to the blog-smog that will start collecting over Cupertino at 10 a.m. PDT.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

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