Get equipped for remote digital project management [Deals]

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CoM - Remtoe Project Management
Make the most of your remote work setup with lifetime access to digital project management how-to guides, resources, eBooks, and community support.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Project managers are used to working directly with their teams. But work life is changing for everybody, so this bundle includes everything you need for doing digital project management from a distance.

Amazon’s iPhone app uses computer vision to identify and replace screws and other parts

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Amazon's new Part Finder feature for iPhone uses computer vision to identify and buy hundreds of different types of fasteners.
Amazon's new Part Finder feature for iPhone uses computer vision to identify and buy hundreds of different types of fasteners.
Photo: Sheila Sund via Flickr

Until recently, if you needed to replace a screw, nut or bolt, you’d take a trip to the hardware store. With Amazon’s latest update to its iPhone app, there’s no need.

Part Finder is a new feature of Amazon’s camera search that can identify hundreds of types of screws, nuts, bolts, washers and other fasteners. Once ID’d, they can be bought straight from the app.

Google gamifies machine learning with Emoji Scavenger Hunt

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Emoji game Scavenger Hunt turns powerful machine learning and image recognition technology into a game for your phone.
Emoji Scavenger Hunt turns powerful machine learning and image recognition technology into a game for your phone.
Screenshot: Google

Emoji are many things to many people. Depending who you ask, they’re fun, flirty, confusing, a whole new language, or the demise of language itself.

Google’s Emoji Scavenger Hunt adds one more to the many meanings of emoji: a way to play with machine learning.

Street Fighter hits the actual streets in new ARKit demo

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Street Fighter II in AR shows that old games can learn new tricks.
Street Fighter II in AR shows that old games can learn new tricks.
Screenshot: Abhishek Singh/YouTube

All the Yoga Flames, Dragon Punches and Sonic Booms of Street Fighter II spill out into the real world in a new demo that mixes classic gameplay with augmented reality.

Michigan-based software developer Abhishek Singh‘s “Real World Warrior” edition of Street Fighter II features all the familiar characters, moves and sounds of the original. But now, the game’s arena is the outside world.

“I loved playing [Street Fighter] as a kid with my sister on an actual arcade machine,” Singh told Cult of Mac. “I was thinking about multiplayer experiences and this kind of popped into my head.”

Flashing the peace sign is now a security risk

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fingerprints from selfies
Your fingerprints can now be snatched straight from your selfies.
Photo: Ryuta Ishimoto/Flickr CC

Next time someone poses for a selfie with their fingers held up in a peace sign, maybe tell them to leave it at a smile.

An ordinary photo of the universal sign of goodwill might be enough for a thief to copy a fingerprint, thanks to the high quality of digital photos these days. And since Touch ID and similar technologies turn fingerprints into keys that unlock our devices and the data we keep in them, that’s cause for concern.

Best Mac and iOS games of 2016

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best mac and ios games 2016
2016 might have sucked overall, but not for games.
Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

2016 Year in Review Cult of Mac When it comes to games, Apple trails behind Microsoft and the broader PC market. Though Cupertino’s hardware often sports cutting-edge specs, the fact is that gaming was never really the intended use for Apple machines.

Why this is, and whether it should prevent top titles from gracing Mac screens, is enough for its own article. Luckily, things are changing: From sprawling strategy games to genre-bending first-person titles, 2016 gave Apple fans a harvest of great titles for Mac and iOS alike.

Shigeru Miyamoto says Nintendo and Apple go together like Mario and Luigi

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Players have spent more than $1 billion on Nintendo's mobile games
Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto opened up to Glixel about his thoughts on his role, and the company's partnership with Apple for Super Mario Run.
Photo: Nintendo

When Nintendo announced they’d be working with Apple to launch Super Mario Run on iPhone, the partnership made a lot of sense. After all, both companies share a similar arc in the history of their respective industries, each defining the early decades of the home gaming and computing industries, respectively. But perhaps the most relevant similarity is in the two companies’ focus on design.

Expel water from your iPhone speaker grille using only sound

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iPhone 7 soaked in water
A crafty Redditor discovers a simple and free way to clear trapped water from your iPhone 7's speaker grille.
Photo: Apple

Apple touts the new iPhone 7 as being water-resistant enough to take into the shower. There’s really no good reason to bathe with your smartphone, but the point is that iPhone 7 owners don’t need to worry about a little rain or spilled tea.

Naturally, some people waltzed into their shower stalls with their expensive new phones in hand — just cuz — and some found a weakness in the iPhone 7’s water-resistance. Luckily for foolhardy iPhone owners everywhere, a Redditor discovered a simple hack for getting the water out.

GE’s new Alexa lamp shines light on internet of things

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GE's prototype adds Amazon's voice-activated assistant Alexa to a tabletop LED lamp.
GE's prototype adds Amazon's voice-activated assistant Alexa to a tabletop LED lamp.
Photo: GE

We’ve heard for years that the internet of things™ would imbue everything in our lives with the power of the web, all accessible by voice. If you’ve been waiting for something that isn’t a computer or smartphone or smart home hub to ask for driving directions or movie times, here’s your dream device at last: It’s a lamp that gets its smarts from Alexa.

How to set up single sign-on for Apple TV and iOS devices

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Apple TV Dark Mode
Apple just added four new TV providers to its single sign-on feature. Here's how to get set up.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s new single sign-on feature can be a serious timesaver. Just sign in to your cable, satellite or internet TV accounts — like Dish, DirecTV, Sling TV, etc. — via your iPhone or Apple TV. Then you’ll be automatically logged in to any app that’s compatible with your service.

No more fumbling around trying to remember your user name and password when you just want to watch some video!

People love Apple’s doomed AirPort more than any other router

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Apple's routers are #1.
Apple's routers are #1.
Photo: Apple

Apple sure seems to be doing routers right. At least according to the more than 3,000 customers polled in J.D. Power’s 2016 Wireless Router Satisfaction Report.

Apple came out as the top-rated router manufacturer in Overall Satisfaction, which would be great news for the AirPort team — if Apple hadn’t just disbanded it.

New York district attorney calls for federal law to unlock seized iPhones

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iPhone 7 back
Law enforcement officials still want Apple to hack the iPhone.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance wants the Trump administration to help create federal legislation requiring Apple and Google to remove default encryption from their smartphones.

The recommendation comes from the DA office’s second report on Smartphone Encryption and Public Safety, presented by Vance at the opening of the Manhattan DA’s new cyberlab. New York County is currently sitting on 423 iPhones it can’t break into, even with a warrant, so the DA’s office is pushing for change.

Hold onto your butts: Apple restores bootylicious peach emoji

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The emoji that also looks like a butt will stay that way.
The emoji that also looks like a butt will stay that way.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Sometimes a peach is just a peach. But when it comes to emoji, it’s also a tush.

Yet, much to the chagrin of those who like to use emoji for more than visual grocery lists, Apple’s first 10.2 developer beta replaced the peach emoji with something that looks less like a posterior, and more like a piece of fruit or something.