Rob LeFebvre - page 43

High-school senior Omar Martin Del Campo and his small team of developers have found a way to make text messaging even more secure. Peek lets you chat with friends via the app and your messages are erased as you read them.

The app asks you to authenticate with Twitter or Facebook to ensure your identity to your friends, and then you can chat away in the fairly clean, purple-themed interface on offer.

“Our focus,” said Del Campo in an email with Cult of Mac, “is a great user experience, beautiful design, simplicity and safe and secure messaging.”

Here’s what I use on a fairly daily basis: external hard drive, iPhone, iPad(s), gaming mouse, flash drive full of media and DSLR camera.

Man or woman, I’m willing to bet you’ve got a similar load of peripherals that you use with your MacBook Pro or Air. With the MacBook’s two USB 3.0 ports, there’s never enough to go around when I want to plug in more than, say, two devices at once. Sure there’s two Thunderbolt ports, too, but I’m just not that fancy.

Roll the dice, as many times as you like, and add the results together to create a huge attack number. Use that number (and a ridiculously large sword) to bash in the heads of random dungeon monsters.

Roll a one, though, and your turn is over. This cost-benefit system comes right out of a slot machine in Vegas and it’s got me hooked.

As the game editor here at Cult of Mac, I spend a lot of time with a controller or touch screen in my hand. Of all the fun games out this week on the iPhone and iPad, I’ve got to say, Tiny Dice Dungeon is the one I’ve spent the most time playing.

If I was forced, say, to choose my iOS Game of the Week (and I’m not), I’d pick this one.

Wood. It’s just better.

This portable bluetooth speaker uses sustainable bamboo to wrap a pretty great little speaker up in the warm resonance of wood. Kickstarted and made by the folks at Otis & Eleanor, the Bongo portable bluetooth is capable and beautiful at the same time.

There are Bongo designs for everyone, some with dark brown stain, some with black, and some with no stain at all. The speaker grilles come in a variety of ’60s and ’70s-inspired fabric with colors straight out of your mom’s old living room. The unit we got to spend time with comes with brown, copper, gold and red tweed covered speakers and fits in just about any decor we can throw at it around the house. It also looks stunning in a hotel room, what with its classic retro look.

The portable battery from Halo is perfect for those times when I want to go stealth, keeping my iPhone 5 as free of those bulky, heavy battery cases as possible.

Between running levels of Hodappy Bird and checking Twitter for any vanity retweets, slapping photos of my meals up on Instagram and surreptitiously reading Facebook posts from ex-girlfriends, I am a battery killer.

With the Halo charger available, I found myself grabbing it and a lightning cable on my way out the door all the time, whether heading to the coffee shop or just for a quick bike ride along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. It’s a perfect way to ensure I have the power I need on demand without strapping my iPhone into some fat case like the Mophie.

The third episode in acclaimed adventure game The Wolf Among Us has just dropped on Steam, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and iOS, and –if the trailer below is any indication — it’s a doozy. Titled ‘A Crooked Mile,’ the new episode looks to raise the stakes for its main character, the detective in a city full of ex-patriate fairy tale characters.

It looks like Bigby Wolf is really working on the “bad” part of his better known moniker (The Big Bad Wolf) in this video game series based on the Eisner Award-winning Fables graphic novels by Bill Willingham and published by Vertigo Comics.

The trailer (below) is short on details but long on accolades as it shows Bigby tearing through the magical side of New York, dropping the F-bomb and getting very, very angry. Those red eyes aren’t a good sign for anyone.

You know, it sure would be nice if you could retain ownership of all that pithy writing you’ve done over the years on Twitter, right?

I mean, chances are you’ve crafted some fairly amazing 140-character diatribes along the way, and it might be fun to go back and see just how awesome you are.

Of course, the truth may be that you need to delete that Twitter account and just archive all of them for some embarrassing reason, but we’re not judging. Whatever the reason, it’s super-simple to download all your Twitter writing to your Mac. Here’s how.

If you’ve ever wanted to slash and hack your way around a party full of your friends, now may be the time. Bonsai Slice is a new free-to-play multi-player iPad-only party game that has you using your iPad as a sword, slicing and dicing your way through a bunch of wacky objects. You’ll collect new swords, chase high scores and crazy combos, and compete with your friends in real time and online.

You can even play in single-player mode, but where’s the fun in that?

Check out the video below for a taste of the sword-swinging action.

Apple turned what could have been a deathly boring financial ritual into an occasion for celebration Wednesday, posting record numbers and making headlines with some unexpected moves.

Here’s our take on everything you need to know from the latest quarterly earnings call.

Tim Cook will put his iPhone on speaker this afternoon to tell the world how much money Apple has made selling us insanely great gadgets, and we’ll be liveblogging the call.

During the quarterly earnings report, which starts at 2 p.m. Pacific, Cook and company will share details about Apple’s Q2 financial performance with investors and the rest of the faithful.

Some analysts predict a yawn-inducing “business as usual” earnings report, but you never know – Cook might have to sing some fancy arpeggios if the numbers don’t jibe with predictions made last year, when he crowed about exciting products in the Apple pipeline.

Whether Tim’s talk leads to boos or a standing ovation, Cult of Mac will brave the recital of all the mind-numbing money-speak to help you tune in to the true meaning behind it all. Keep this page open as we post all the interesting bits.

Not everyone has a fancy computer backpack or messenger bag. Some folks just have non-techie backpacks, bags, or luggage, and they’re perfectly fine with that.

However, most of those folks would benefit from a sleeve or two to cover and protect their precious technology. And, if you’re going to go that route, you might as well go all the way and get something that’s special.

The Mujjo Low-Key Macbook Sleeve is angling for just that “all the way” look and feel.

Some folks find that the iPhone’s noise-cancellation feature causes a weird, uncomfortable sensation. It’s a product of the way the technology works, as Apple Discussion member KiltedTim says, linking to HowStuffWorks:

“In order to cancel out background noise, the sound is not “eliminated” from the audio stream you’re hearing. It is countered by a second audio stream that basically eliminates your ability to hear it.

Since the sound and the “counter sound” are still hitting your eardrum, this can result in an odd sensation. Your ear is processing the sound, but your brain isn’t registering it. Since the inner ear controls balance, this will produce a dizzying effect in some people.”

If this is bothering you, here’s how to turn off the noise-cancellation feature, which Apple added to iOS 7. (Originally exclusive to the iPhone 5s, noise cancellation is now available to older devices in iOS 7.1.)

The OS X sidebar, introduced in Mac OS X Panther (10.3), has gotten an increased set of features over the years, including the most recent changes in Mountain Lion, which let you Hide and change the order of your Sidebar items.

These changes carried over to Mavericks, and it’s possible some of us forgot that we could do these things, if we even knew it in the first place.

In the spirit of showing you how to do do stuff you may have missed, here’s how to add things to your Sidebar, hide them when you don’t want to see them, and then move them into a different order over there on the left-hand side of your Finder window.

We’ve all had to do it: make those conference calls to services that require you to enter in a code, or a room number, or what have you.

If you call these numbers frequently and want to save a little time, you can enter in the extensions and codes into your Contacts app, but you’ll want to code in the bit of wait you’ll need for the conference call system to recognize it.

It’s easy to do, and you can do this right on your iPhone.

Many videos that you purchase these days via iTunes or other sources have subtitles, those little words beneath the screen that were created to help caption videos.

These can be useful for someone with a hearing impairment, or who reads a different language than the one being spoken in the video, to watch these during a movie.

In OS X Mavericks, you can easily get subtitles going in any supported video, and you can customize the way they look, as well. Here’s how to find out if your video supports subtitles, how to turn them on and how to change their look and feel.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft came out on iPad this week, and I can’t seem to stop playing it. The amazingly well-balanced digital collectible card battling game has got its hooks in me and won’t let up.

This is the same game as the one that came out on Mac and PC last month, but in an easy to transport and play iPad version. The touch controls are well suited to the gameplay, and you’ll find quite a bit of depth once you figure out the basic card game itself.

I spent a little time recording this free-to-play game and chatting about it in the video below.

Bluetooth Guitar Pedal Will Thrill Your Ears But Hurt Your Brain

IK Multimedia is responsible for a veritable boat-load of music peripherals and apps, like the hard-rocking guitar crunch of effects app Amplitube and the portable MIDI keyboard iRig Keys. If you’re a musician interested in working with iOS devices on stage, IK Multimedia is the place to go.

It was with excitement, then, that I opened the latest review gadget from the musical company, the iRig BlueBoard, a small footprint Bluetooth-enabled pedal board meant to help you switch effects in a guitar app like Amplitube or piano sounds in something like iLectric Piano, both IK Multimedia apps.

The BlueBoard is a great idea, especially if you’re working with a guitar or keyboard hooked up to an iPad or iPhone. Being able to switch settings on the fly with a foot-operated switch is something I do all the time with my analog guitar foot pedals. Having it do so via Bluetooth is even better, as it won’t take up the 30-pin or Lightning connector, leaving that free to connect a guitar or MIDI interface, like the iRig HD guitar adapter or the iRig Keys.

Unfortunately, that’s where the great idea stops and the difficult to figure out begins.

Garageband has forever changed the way weekend headbangers create music on their Macs. Included with all new Macs and available in the Mac App store for free, it gives brand new as well as seasoned musicians a way to record all kinds of music, letting them connect real instruments, MIDI devices and microphones to the Mac for easy music sessions.

It also does some other cool things, which we’ll tell you about right now.

Drummer: The Killer New Feature

The latest version of Garageband, 10.0.2, offers an amazing new piece of kit called Drummer. This one deserves a standing ovation. For years, I’ve used Garageband to mock up demos for my disco band. (Yes, we do weddings.) Anyway, the software makes putting together a quick multi-track song super simple and I’ve always enjoyed making sound loops–especially drum loops–to give my demos a more professional feel than I’ve ever been able to with a drum machine or synthesizer module.

I’m a guitar player who understands vocals, bass, and drum parts, so it’s usually pretty simple to drag Garageband loops to the editing area then let the software make everything sync up easily. The Smart features of Garageband have made it chimp simple for me to create an entire song without touching an instrument besides my guitar.

Garageband’s latest feature, though, way above what drum loops could ever do —  it’ll make you want to sway with a flickering lighter like a stoned fanboy in utter appreciation.

So. Drummer offers several ways to make it sound as if Neal Peart is banging on his 360-degree drum kit from your humble home studio. Simply click on a drummer profile to customize the sound and feel of that virtual drummer’s playing in real time with just a few clicks and drags. What would take quite a bit of time with drum loops is now seamless and simple. Garageband is simply taking care of changing drum loops in the background, but what comes out of the speakers will be music to your ears.

You’d be playing a different tune (probably to the ca-ching of several thousand dollars) to get this kind of subtlety from a drum machine or drum loops —  or giving it up for your own damn drummer. Garageband’s new Drummer feature gives all of that to us for free. Free!

Ok, so the basic package comes equipped with one drummer (Kyle), but still. TK KYLE’S DRUMMING STYLE. But an entire troop of 18 timpanists will set struggling musicians back just $4.99. Heck, Apple just added three new ones (plus a seriously useful MP3 export function) just last month, FOR THE SAME IN-APP PURCHASE?

All of this to say: you’ve now got a fully responsive session drummer with personality, style, and variety sitting on your Mac, just waiting for your latest song idea.  Each drummer gets their own custom kit with its own specific sound, just like a real drummer.

Learn To Play Like A Pro

While the latest version of this fantastic (and free!) music production suite has lost some functionality like podcasting and Magic Garageband, it still has plenty to recommend it for those new to music or old vets alike.

One of these cool features is the Learn to Play function, which has some pretty good basic music tutorials baked right in, along with the capability to purchase videos from hit artists like Sting and Norah Jones, who teach you how to play some of their famous songs.

It’s a pretty heady set of music learning; here’s how to access it. Getting really good at your instrument will take more than watching a video or three, but this is a great start if you want to try your hand at the guitar or piano.

When you travel with a Mac laptop, whether a Macbook Pro or Air, you may be leaving it open to malicious users to get into your machine.

One of the things you can do to keep them out of your precious files is to turn off File Sharing completely. Then, if you still want to share files with other Mac users, you can use AirDrop, which is more of a temporary opening of the security gates than File Sharing is.

Note that you can indeed improve security while using File Sharing on and setting up your Firewall with specific ports, but that’s the subject of a different tip.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a digital collectible card game in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, only set in the high-fantasy World of Warcraft universe. The Mac and PC version came out last month after an extended open beta period.

What may not be apparent from the above is that Hearthstone is hands down the best card battler I’ve ever played. Putting it on iPad makes it that much more habit-forming. The game is full of awesome and bad Scottish accents, which makes it all the better. (“UUUUUUUUUther versus Jaaaaaaynuh.”)

It’s really not fair — I was just starting to leave the iPad at home in favor of only the Macbook Pro in my bag. Now I need to take the tablet with me once again.

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old rocker: you people just have no idea how good you have it.

The ease with which you can put together a fairly amazing-sounding song with that iPad and a few peripherals is darn near insulting, considering the kind of stuff we used to have to do, back in the day.

When I was in a band in Los Angeles in the 1990s (no applause, really, please), we recorded a little demo on a friend’s recording set up. This was a full-on audio workstation that used, joy of joys, Alesis Digital Audio Tape, (ADAT) a thrilling new technology that let you record up to eight tracks at once. My buddy linked up two of these bad boys for a full 16-track mini studio, and we spent weeks in that smelly room playing the same 10 songs, over and over to get them right. If we screwed up a part, we’d have to back up to the beginning again, a laborious process that certainly extended our timeline exponentially, newbie recording musicians that we were.

Soon after that epic effort, I wanted to do some of my own recording, but I really didn’t have the money to buy the kind of crazy-expensive equipment that we had used on our demo tape (remember tape?), so I turned to my Mac, a Performa 638CD that the salesman at Circuit City had sold me without mentioning that PowerMacs were just about to come out. Jerk.

Anyway, I lost a few brain cells learning some arcane audio recording software enough to just scrape by. I’m not sure I remember which software it was (brain cell loss, remember?) it might have been Cubase, Logic, or ProTools, but to say these were overkill (and darn pricey) is an understatement. They were hard to learn, and you needed a ton of weird equipment to connect MIDI keyboards or drum machines to the thing, so I didn’t even bother.

Macs continued to play a role in my music, but not to any huge extent. I’d rather be a musician than a recording engineer — and that was what you’d need to be to make older equipment and software sound halfway decent.

Flash forward to 2004. Steve Jobs announced Garageband, with a little help from John Mayer. Here, finally, was multi-track recording software for the rest of us. A little program that would let me record live music, use pre-recorded loops like the most expensive software at the time, and mix it all down to something that I could then burn to a CD and play in my car? All for the cost of, well, next to nothing? Sign me up, right now.

The next few iterations of the Garageband software added amazing technological advances, like recording more and more tracks at once, pitch correction and automated pan tracking (moving the audio from one side of a stereo signal to the other). The ability to easily create and edit Podcasts led to my short stint as a podcaster, in fact.

Now you’ve got this ridiculously advanced audio recording software on an iPad. A tablet that you can slip into a backpack and just go. It’s a glorious time to be a musician with this kind of ability within your reach. Just be sure and know you’re totally spoiled.

Eli Hodapp is the Editor in Chief of popular iOS gaming site, TouchArcade. He’s just released his vanity project, Hodappy Bird, a humorous take on the Flappy Bird phenomenon. The game plays just like its inspiration, with a bird that looks a lot like Hodapp and a Chicago skyline background (Eli lives in the city). Hodapp gave developer Paul Pridham $50 as a joke to build the game, and Pridham made it in the course of a weekend.

It’s all in good fun, of course, but also perhaps a commentary on the recent explosion of Flappy Bird into the market. We wanted to know more, so we contacted him.

Eli took a few moments to chat with Cult of Mac via email today about his project.

While the latest version of Apple’s fantastic (and free!) music production suite, GarageBand, has lost some functionality like podcasting and Magic GarageBand, it still has plenty to recommend it for those new to music or old vets alike.

One of these cool features is the Learn to Play function, which has some pretty good basic music tutorials baked right in, along with the capability to purchase videos from hit artists like Sting and Norah Jones, who teach you how to play some of their famous songs.

It’s a pretty heady set of music learning; here’s how to access it. Getting really good at your instrument will take more than watching a video or three, but this is a great start if you want to try your hand at the guitar or piano.

I’m all for getting my stuff into iTunes more efficiently, aren’t you? Jordan Merrick is, too, and he’s come up with a brilliant way to do just that. He’s also got a great site full of clever tips there as well. Really, go check it out.

The default way, says Merrick, for media to get to iTunes is like this: drag and drop a folder full of music or a video you’ve converted from DVD to iTunes. iTunes takes said media, copies it, and places it into its own special folder structure.

What happens in this case is that you’re left holding two copies of that album or video — one in your iTunes folder and one wherever you pulled it from. That’s kind of silly, if you ask me, especially if you back up regularly. No one needs two copies of anything on their hard drive.

Luckily, there’s a cool folder in your iTunes folder that lets you add stuff directly to iTunes. Sadly, it’s pretty buried, but Merrick will show you a better way.

Sometimes you just want an iPhone case that protects that beloved all-encompassing communications and gaming device from the vagaries of your crazy life, for sure.

There are numerous options for those of us who tend to the “drop our gear constantly” school of gadget ownership, but most of them end up being incredibly bulky and difficult to use. Some even provide a screen guard that is less than touchable, as it were.

The Voyager series for the iPhone 5 and 5s, however, aims to provide similar drop, screen, and debris protection as many of these other cases, all for a more affordable price.

I took the case out for a spin to see if it could, in fact, protect my iPhone 5 without trouble, and whether the added bulk is worth the trade off in protection.