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News - page 1408

Find What Tab Is Playing Sound With Google Chrome’s Latest Update

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For those of us who live the lives of professional bloggers, here’s a common occurence. You wake up in the morning and load up a bunch of tabs of stories you want to read that day. Soon, you have two or three dozen tabs open, one of which has an auto-playing video. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t bloody find the thing!

Yeah. Chrome just fixed that.

Tiny Lightbulbs, A Store For Completed Kickstarter Projects

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The trouble with Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects is that they take so damn long to arrive. They need to get funded, they need to get made, and only then will they be shipped. In the meantime, you’ve forgotten about them, or – worse – you bought something and now, six months later, you no longer want or need it.

What if there were a way to browse and buy only successful, shipping products, and buy them as God intended – with immediate shipping? Well, now there is. It’s a web store called Tiny Lightbulbs, and you’ll recognize a lot of what you see there.

Bem’s Retro Radio-Style Speaker Separates Into Stereo Sections

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Bem’s upcoming Wireless Speaker Duo is great in all kinds of ways. First, it looks like an old-timey radio, complete with rounded edges and simple bent-metal handle. Second, it has proper playback control buttons on the top. And third, it contains two speakers which can be popped out and separated to make a stereo pair, before being returned to the base for charging.

Smart Photo Album: Guess What It Does?

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Probably the last thing you want to admit in your app’s release notes is that you’ve integrated Appirator, the annoying “please rate me, please please please” popup that makes your paying customers hate your app. But we’ll give NexTiga’s Smart Photo Album a pass, becasue it also adds some great new real features.

Google Play Movies & TV Finally Comes To iOS, But Flaws Might Make You Hate It

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Google has finally released its official iOS app for the Movies & TV section of its Play Store. The universal app is available for free in the App Store, but it comes with several severe limitations.

First off, you can’t buy content through the app due to Google not wanting to give Apple a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases. Another con is the lack of offline playback, meaning you can’t cache a video to watch later when Wi-Fi isn’t available. And for some odd reason, video only plays back in standard def on the iPhone.

The app is pretty barebones, but it is nice for the Chromecast, Google’s little streaming dongle that plugs into the TV. Chromecast users with iOS hardware have previously been limited to Netflix and Hulu Plus, but Google Play offers more recent movie and TV selections.

Source: App Store

Pac-Man For iOS Will Munch Up Your Time [Review]

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More than 30 years old as a concept, and one of the very first iOS games to be released in the App Store back in the day, Pac-Man is a genuine O.G. of the gaming world.

Pac-Man by Namco Bandai Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Price: Free (currently) w/ in-app purchases

With Apple currently giving it away for a limited time as part of its “App of the Week” promotion, we at Cult of Mac thought the time was right to pay homage by revisiting one of the all-time-greats.

So how does it measure up here in 2014?

NY College Probes Scott Forstall’s Bizarre Appearance In Ads

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The City College of New York is investigating its use of former Apple exec Scott Forstall’s photo in advertisements for the school’s student ID card.

Cult of Mac contacted the college Wednesday afternoon about Forstall’s strange appearance on the promotional materials. “I’m not commenting,” said Ellis Simon, City College’s public relations director, who added that he was aware of the situation but needed time to “get all the facts straight” before talking about the apparent mixup.

L.A. School Board Blows Entire $115 Million Tech Budget On iPads

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The Los Angeles Board of Education has voted to continue its efforts to provide every student and teacher in the L.A. Unified school district with a computer by approving a new $115-million proposal to distribute iPads to 38 more campuses. The proposal also calls for the purchase of laptops for every student at seven high schools, and picks up a couple thousand extra iPads for new state tests in spring.

Overall the board thinks it will buy somewhere around 67,500 new tablets just for the spring testing, even though an oversight committee recommend only purchasing 38,500. The board decided getting everyone the same model at the same time is of the utmost importance for revolutionizing education, even though the $1-billion effort is expected to exhaust all their tech funds made available by voter-approved school-construction bonds.

Apple Reaches Settlement With FTC Regarding In-App Purchases

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After negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission for months regarding the use of in-app purchases in the App Store, Apple has reached a consent agreement with the agency, according to a company-wide email Tim Cook just sent employees.

Apple’s in-app purchases practices have frustrated regulators since debuting in the App Store back in 2009. In his letter to employees, which was obtained by Re/code, Cook says a host of complaints from customers led Apple to investigate its practices. Last year Apple emailed 28 million App Store customers regarding their in-app purchases and subsequently refunded more than 37,000 in-app purchases that parents claim were unauthorized. The FTC announced that Apple will refund $32.5 million to customers as part of the settlement.

The settlement also requires Apple to change its billing practices by March 31 to ensure customers give their informed consent before billing them for in-app purchases. Apple also has to add an option for customers to remove that consent at any time.

Cook says “it doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled. To us, it smacked of double jeopardy,” but the FTC’s deal isn’t going to require Apple to do anything extra, so they decided to sign it and move on.

Here’s the full letter:

HOYO, The Easy-Access Shower Pocket For iPhones

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I can think of one reason, and one reason only, to take my iPhone into the shower, and that reason is YouPorn. But maybe you’re waiting for a call from the delivery man or a visit from the plumber, and you’re all sweaty and dirty and you need to strip off all your clothes and get in the shower right now. In that case, you need the cool new HoYo, an easy-to-access waterproof cellphone pocket for the shower.

This Mac Pro Hackintosh Was Made From An Actual Trash Can [Gallery]

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While few of us would say its design belongs inside of one, one of the most common jokes about the new Mac Pro’s stealth engine looks is to say it looks exactly like a trash can.

That got one German thinking. If the Mac Pro looks so much like a trash can, why not build a Hackintosh out of a trash can. Which is exactly what he did, crafting his Mac Pro out of an Authentics Lunar bathroom trash can that comes with matching toilet brush. And while the replica isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the real thing, it certainly looks the part. Check out more images below.

The iPhone 5c Is Driving Customers Into The Arms Of The iPhone 5s

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The successor to the iPhone 5c is nearly here.
The successor to the iPhone 5c is nearly here.
Photo: Apple

The iPhone 5c isn’t a failure by any means, but even so, it’s not selling as well as most people would have expected, with sales of the iPhone 5s believed to outpace its plastic midrange sibling by as much as three to one. And while it’s true that the iPhone 5c is still selling well enough to make it the second- or third-best-selling smartphone at every carrier, it’s still a middling success compared to the iPhone 5s.

Yet maybe that’s what Apple wants. In fact, maybe Apple realized that by selling the previous year’s phone for $100 less, they were cutting into their own margins by selling what was, in design, a luxury phone at a mid-tier cost. If so, the iPhone 5c is working exactly as designed.

Court Says Workers Can Sue Apple For Anti-Poaching Agreement

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Apple suppliers are enjoying huge revenue boosts thanks to the iPhone 6
Apple suppliers are enjoying huge revenue boosts thanks to the iPhone 6

A group of 64,000 Silicon Valley workers have won the right to pursue a lawsuit against a number of tech companies — including Apple — accused of an “overarching conspiracy” to keep employee pay low through anti-poaching agreements.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh that will let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what defendants claim could be more than $9 billion of damages.