Rob LeFebvre - page 35

Tired of being stuck with tiny little Emojis?

Well, the developer for new app LOLy has the solution: huge, animated emoticons that you can send to friends via text message, Facebook, or email. You can also just copy them and send along to any other text-accepting app, like Twitter, Kik, or Whatsapp.

The images are cute and fun to send, and once you’ve used the images included with the free LOLy app, you’ll want to grab a couple more packs for $0.99 each.

“I primarily designed this app for women with a focus on the 30s-50s demographic,” says app developer Gina Pell. “I had a hunch that most emoji were geared towards teens and lacked the sophistication, style, or wit that my friends or I would find interesting.”

When The Magazine ceases publication this December, owner Glenn Fleishman will be closing shop on an ambitious two-year experiment in digital publishing.

It’s not a total surprise — subscriptions were already on a downward trend when Fleishman transitioned from editor to owner of The Magazine after purchasing the publication from Marco Arment last year — and it’s not a total bummer, either.

In fact, Fleishman says he’s feeling pretty good about stopping here: he’s met his obligation to provide Kickstarter backers with their one-year subscriptions, and he’s ending this fascinating experiment while it’s still profitable.

“I’m even able to pay myself an ever-declining hourly rate for my time,” said Fleishman, who spoke with Cult of Mac about what went right, what went wrong, and his feelings about pulling the plug on a project that was his full-time job for the last year and a half.

The Magazine, one of the best original technology-focused Newsstand magazines out there, is closing up shop as of December of this year.

The Magazine raised the bar for a digital-only publication, providing well-written and edited short and long non-fiction that ranged topically from Apple to personal stories with true warmth and impact. We’ll miss the twice monthly title and wish the team the best.

When asked on Twitter why the publication was ending, The Magazine’s official account cited money issues.

Quick – grab your iPhone and take a picture of something nearby — the remote control on your coffee table, a pair of Warby Parkers, anything, really. Now take that photo and turn it into a fully editable vector graphic that can be used by a host of drawing and artistic programs across your iPhone, iPad and Mac, all via the magic of Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

That’s precisely what Adobe Shape CC does, one of a host of new apps available on your iOS device to make capturing the real world much easier than ever before.

Here’s a quick video rundown of how it works.

Ready for your next nerdy dose of Star Wars awesomeness? Lucasfilm Animation and Disney have put together an all-new animated adventure that takes place 14 years after the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (the third and final prequel in the Star Wars saga) and five years before Star Wars: A New Hope (the original movie that came out in 1977).

If you have an Apple ID, you can check out the first regular episode of the series right now on iTunes for free. How’s that for a deal?

Check out the extended trailer for the Star Wars: Rebels series below.

Got three minutes? Then you can travel Turkey, north to south, through this shifting and cunningly edited short film, called Watchtower of Turkey, by Leonardo Dalessandri.

He traveled over 3500 kilometers in 20 days, filming the lush landscapes and varied peoples of this middle eastern land, across eight different regions and cities in the Republic of Turkey, a land that has been inhabited since the paleolithic age.

“I’ve crossed Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Ephesus, Istanbul, Konya; and tasted baklava, kunefe, doner, the turkish tea; and got the chance to meet the soul of Turkey, its people,” writes Dalessandri on the video page, “and got their smiles and their hospitality.”

You’ve got to see this short film below.

Even with the recent improvements to iOS 8’s handling of photos you take with your iPhone, it’s still kind of a pain in the butt to sort through and delete the ones you don’t want to keep.

The developers behind Flic, a fantastic new photo app, decided they’d had enough and built a better app. This one works a lot like Tinder, a dating app that uses a swipe to sort potential dates.

If you’ve ever had to sort through a ton of photos on your iPhone, you’re going to love Flic. Getting through all your photos is speedy and efficient.

“I just went on my honeymoon,” developer Brandon Evans told Cult of Mac, “and I think I had 400 pictures to go through. It only took me, like two minutes to go through using Flic.”

All Cult of Mac’s top news stories and features, compiled in one place to peruse easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got all you need to know about iOS 8’s widgets and Family Sharing, some neat ways to stream movies and TV shows to your iOS device, and some great features on high-end wrappers for your Apple gadgets as well as the 12 best games on all important gaming platforms.

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine October 3 Edition, Free on iTunes

Careful now – Pixar’s upcoming film, Inside Out, takes place within the emotional centers of a pre-pubescent girl. There’s some crazy characters in there — including Joy, Sadness, Anger and Fear — and they’re all just so happy to meet you.

In this brand new, super-short trailer, we get a tiny peek at what’s in store from us from Pete Doctor, the director of both Monsters, Inc. and Up.

Check it out below.

Sure the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have an amazing camera with all sorts of improvements to make stunning use of in the pursuit of the perfect high-definition time-lapse or slow motion video.

But the video (below) is so stunning, so amazingly beautiful – there’s no way you’re going to be able to pull this off on your iPhone 6, no matter how amazing Apple’s latest gadget is.

It’s hard enough to sing and play guitar at the same time, let alone manage a floor full of guitar effects pedals. Add to that trying to create vocal effects like most listeners expect and you’ve got a solo musician’s worst nightmare.

The folks at TC-Helicon have come up with a couple of pretty nifty floor-style pedal boxes that have you covered though: You can dial in a fantastic guitar sound for either acoustic or electric guitar, fill a room with amazing vocal effects and backing harmonies, and even loop musical phrases to create a song with multiple parts on the fly. Dubbed Play Acoustic and Play Electric, these simple stomp boxes contain some serious technology in an easy-to-use platform.

Here’s how it plays out.

“Life is either an incredible adventure,” says the Aussie-tinged voice over for this new GoPro 4 trailer, “or it’s nothing at all.”

So when you’re next diving with orcas, racing extremely modified cars in Japan, or just chillin’ at the latest DJ-powered mega-concert, you can be sure to record yourself and all your hip and gorgeous young friends in stunning 4K resolution.

Of course, you probably don’t have a 4K television (who does?) to play it on, but the video below has some jaw-dropping images in it that you can see if you jack up your Macbook Pro’s Retina display to approximate 4K on a YouTube video.

This new trailer has flying robots, stunningly massive spaceships, and baroque alien societies galore. It’s a heart-pounding glimpse into the new film, Jupiter Ascending, which comes out in February of 2015.

It’s also got some Channing Tatum with pointy ears (a sci-fi staple!) and Mila Kunis looking badass in pleather. Also, some delightful moments with Sean Bean, and he doesn’t even die in this trailer. The trailer is stunning, and you can see hints of The Matrix and Cloud Atlas all over this thing, which makes sense — it’s a Wachowski film, thorough and through.

Give this two minute eye-candy reveal a look.

Bendgate is the latest in a long line of minor Apple problems that get blown out of proportion by the Internet’s echo chamber and the media jackals that inevitably swoop in and howl about the latest “crisis.”

The same sort of over-the-top backlash happened with the iPhone 4’s reception issue (Antennagate) and the iPad’s trickle-charge feature (Batterygate). It’s a familiar cycle: Apple’s fantastic new device captures the world’s attention, a glitch arises and suddenly the world is coming to an end — at least until it’s not.

“Apple’s ability to trigger consumer demand is probably without rival across the globe — that’s no small feat,” says Larry Barton, a pioneer in corporate crisis management who studies the causes of and responses to incidents like these. “Their core, loyal customer has proven to be forgiving across several minor incidents, and Bendgate is just that — a relatively minor snafu that’s not uncommon with a first-generation design.”

Hit the sweet spot on YouTube with a well-timed video, and you could be rolling in the dough.

Lewis Hilsenteger may have done just that with his iPhone 6 Plus bending video, which has now gathered a jaw-dropping number of hits.

The Ontario-based video blogger has racked up a staggering 36 million views (and climbing!) on his video (posted above), becoming somewhat of a touchstone for the continuing Bendgate saga.

He’s not the only one, however, with folks from around the globe getting tons of traffic (and, we hope, ad revenue) via their gadgety video postings.

Here, then, are a few of the most popular videos that feature Apple’s new products.

Mesmerizing slow-motion videos have flooded the Internet in the last few days, showcasing the kind of amazing footage you rarely see outside a movie theater or Blu-ray disc.

What opened the floodgates? The iPhone 6. The device’s camera and software allows for a mind-boggling 240 frames-per-second shooting rate, letting videographers of all abilities try their hands at slowing down the action and making an impact.

Slow motion has long been used in your favorite films to convey the intensity of a moment (think The Matrix or anything by John Woo), but this is the first time the average consumer has this kind of stunning tech in their hands.

With more than 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units sold already, we’ll undoubtedly get slammed with even more beautiful slow-motion videos in the weeks and months to come. Here are a bunch we’ve found that show off the startling capabilities of the iPhone 6 while also proving that, seriously, people will film anything.

When you need to move files quickly between two Apple devices, AirDrop is an incredibly useful tool. It started out as a Mac-to-Mac thing, and then iPhone-to-iPhone, but with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, AirDrop becomes even more powerful: Now you can share files from Mac to iPhone (or iPad) and vice versa.

Here’s how.

One of the hottest iPhone games in Russia right now isn’t Angry Birds or Candy Crush, but an app that lets you collect bottles as a homeless person.

Homeless: Life Simulator, which just launched in the United States, recently hit the No. 1 spot in the Russian App Store’s role-playing games category.

“Begin your life as an unknown homeless to become a president of your country!” says the marketing copy on the App Store.

The app itself looks really basic — screen-spanning buttons, a couple of casino mini-games and that’s about it. Apparently, being homeless is fun in Russia, because you can gamble your way to success!

The weirdest thing? It’s not the only “homeless” simulator going.

Team “Uncage the Soul” spent three days in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, capturing some stunning moving images with their new iPhone 6 Plus.

While videographer Ben Casales found the iPhone 6 Plus to be an amazing bit of video technology, he’s not worried about his day job.

“Is the iPhone 6+ amazing? YES. Would I bring it to a job shooting for a client? No,” he writes on the video page. “It will shoot 240fps, but it degrades and is not what you’d want full size in a polished video. The in-camera stabilizer in the Instagram Hyperlapse app is AMAZING, but it exports final video in 720 not 1080. Timelapse looks great when the conditions are stable, but changing light has the phone struggling to smoothly change exposures following the light.”

Still, check out the amazing footage below and dream of all the things you can do with it when you’re out and about in a hipster ear-flap hat and drinking PBR. Just be prepared for the very twee pop song by Hugo Hans “Wildrunners.”

If the sheer volume of tower defense games on the App Store is any indication, people (and developers) love them. Defending your base against endless hordes of creeps is a wonderful way to spend some gaming time on your portable device; they’re not super twitch-dependent, and they definitely encourage the zen-like focus a lot of us enjoy when playing games.

Add a hot property like Star Wars to the mix, and you’ve got a game full of potential. Rebels and Stormtroopers in a tower defense game? Sign me up!

This is, however, a Mobage/DeNA free-to-play joint, so it’s hard to tell exactly whether it will be a compelling bit of playtime, or just another way to spam your friends with social media requests. The pre-release sign up allows you to earn some points to be used in-game already; this does not bode well, even with a Star Wars branding.

That said, I’m still pretty excited about playing this game. Check out the developer diary below to see if you’re just as excited.

Continuity and Handoff sound great on paper. They let you transfer certain documents and data between your Mac and your iPhone or iPad, provided both are running the latest Apple system software — iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, which is currently in public beta.

When Continuity and Handoff work, it’s a brilliant display of Apple’s vision for truly interconnected devices. When they don’t, it’s frustrating. Some of the features work flawlessly for me, while others don’t function as advertised (at least on my gear — here’s a compatibility chart that will tell you if your gear is new enough to work with Handoff and Continuity). It’s probably because Yosemite’s in beta — it makes sense that not all features work right now. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Ready to take the plunge? Here’s how to get set started, plus a brief look at the Handoff and Continuity features I was able to get working (and a few more that I was not).

If you haven’t been scared off cloud services by the Fappening or past horrors like MobileMe, you might want to try iCloud Drive, Apple’s answer to Dropbox and Google Drive. It’s a pretty great concept, an extension of the Apple philosophy from way back – documents are identified by the apps they were created by. Before, though, you needed to export a file from a drawing app to use it with a painting app. With iCloud Drive, you’ll be able to move from one app to another much more easily.

Before you begin, make sure you’ve read and understand the warning about using iCloud Drive if you haven’t yet installed OS X Yosemite on your Mac. If you haven’t installed the Yosemite public beta, apps on your iOS 8 devices will be unable to share data with companion apps on your Mac. Consider yourself warned.

If you choose to enable iCloud Drive on your iOS 8 device, and you have an OS X Yosemite beta installed on your Mac, here’s how to use it the right way.

I’ve pretty much become a full-time texter these days, using Apple’s Messages app on my Mac and iPhone to send iMessages (to friends and contacts who use iOS or OS X) as well as regular text messages (to people outside the Apple ecosystem).

iOS 8 brings great new changes to the mobile version of the Messages app, some of which might not be immediately apparent. Here’s a look at the new features and how best to use them.

You can use iCloud or iTunes to transfer your entire mobile system from your old iPhone to your new one. It’s a clumsy, one-way process, though, and can be time consuming.

The folks over at DigiDNA iMazing (formerly DiskAid) have a secure solution that works a bit differently, giving you complete control over how you backup and restore your data, letting you create a complete snapshot of your iPhone before you head to upgrade to iOS 8 or a new iPhone 6.

Here’s how.