News - page 1644

One doesn’t see too many battery cases for the Galaxy S3. Unlike the glass-fortress iPhone — for which battery-cases are more numerous than species of bird — the S3’s battery is easily removable, somewhat lessening the usefulness of an external battery. But that didn’t stop iWalk from coming out with the Chameleon Easy, an impossibly sleek monster of a battery case with 2800 mAh on tap — which iWalk says is the highest capacity of any S3 battery to date.

Madfinger Games announced on its Facebook page today an update to multiplayer FPS game, Shadowgun: Deadzone on both Google Play and the iTunes App Store. The update includes two new maps, new weapon upgrades, a chat feature in the main menu, a new way to play with groups of friends called Gangs, new hats, Rewards for finishing Zone Control or DeathMatch, and an increase to max player ranks (up to 50).

Blake Krikorian, the guy who made the Slingbox, founded a new startup last year called “id8 Group R2 Studios.” Since then, R2 Studios has released an Android app for controlling a home’s heating and lightning with Cestron. The firm also owns some secretive patents relating to remote device and interface control.

According to a new from The Wall Street Journal, a number of big tech companies (including Google and Apple) have been in talks with R2 Studios about a possible buyout:

Ever wanted to view your videos, pictures, or documents from your Mac without having to put them on Dropbox or Google Drive? If you know you need specific files from your Mac desktop at home, you’d probably just use one of those cloud services. But what happens when you get to work and need a file you forgot about, or a family member’s house and want to show off some photos or video from home?

That’s where QuikIO comes in.

The IMDb app is one of my favorites on the iPad, so I was pleased to see that it received a pretty big update today with a lot of new features. Version 3.0 brings a new user interface that focuses on showcasing movies and TV shows in a visually appealing way. There’s a full-featured Watchlist and recommendations that are tailored to each user.

The general experience of browsing photos and lists has been greatly improved and goes hand in hand with the revamped interface. The iPhone version of IMDb has received a little love too.

Instagram has had quite a week since legions of disgruntled users voiced complaints over the app’s shady Terms of Service (TOS) update. One clause in particular caused many users to jump to the conclusion that Instagram planned to outright sell its users’ pics without explicit permission. Instagram quickly responded to the outcry by reassuring that it has no plans to sell photos. An update to the TOS was also promised.

Today Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom published a new blog post detailing the service’s updated stance on content ownership and privacy:

Poor Negative Nimbus. He’s so sad, and so full of water, it’s a challenge to sail across the sky without drenching the happy hot dogs and caterpillars out for a picnic lunch, while still watering the happy flowers along the way. What’s a depressed cloud to do?

Apparently, the answer is to launch on Android, via the Google Play store and the Amazon Marketplace. That’s just what CloudKid’s fantastic game, Negative Nimbus, has done for the holiday season.

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

Day 20 is upon us as the end of the world draws near, and today we’re recognizing a handy menubar app for the Mac called Bartender.

Could it be that, after spending a lifetime looking, I have finally found the perfect bag? Of course not. There’s no single bag that can perform every task.

But I might just have found the perfect day-to-day backpack. It’s the medium Velo from Rickshaw Bagworks in San Fransisco, and it’s pretty damn awesome.

It looks like T-Mobile wants 2013 to be the year they truly start competing against the dominant forces of AT&T and Verizon. They just sewed up a deal to bring the iPhone to their carrier, and they’ve been trying to hurry up and bring iPhone-friendly HSPA+ speeds to fourteen new metropolitan areas.

T-Mobile announced today that they spent $4 billion investing in the modernization of their network over the last 10 months. The improvements mean that more than 100 million people now have enhanced coverage that the iPhone can take advantage of.

“Click!” You hear that? It’s the sound of an iPad turning into a Microsoft Surface, with the help of the Nibiqü keyboard cover.

Now that we see it, it’s obvious that this product was completely inevitable. And almost equally inevitable is the fact that it comes by way of Kickstarter.

Readdle has issued a new update to its Calendars app for iOS today, introducing a number of new features and some nice improvements. And if that wasn’t enough, the company has also slashed 80% off its price tag for Christmas, so if you haven’t already go it, now’s a great time to pick it up.

I usually avoid posting about concept designs because most of them are so lame. But the iPhone Theater deserves a special mention, somewhat ironically for the very same reason – it’s so lame.

With your help, we’ve narrowed down the list of best iOS apps of 2012 to a handful of favorites: Clear, Temple Run, Angry Birds Star Wars, Google Maps, Letterpress, and Paper.

Big thanks to everyone who voted so far. Now’s your chance to pick a winner from the shortlisted finalists.

Verizon continues its quest to leave no city unturned when it comes to its 4G LTE network. Starting today, 29 new markets will enjoy the blazing fast speeds of LTE and bring the total of covered markets to an astounding 470!

Dear Theives. We’ve been over this like a thousand times. If you’re going to steal an iPhone, make sure you either A) Reset it, or B) Turn it off. There’s a wonderful application called Find My iPhone that’s going to lead the cops to you everytime.

Four armed robbers in Springfield Massachusetts still haven’t learned this valuable bit of information. The robbers donned their masked and rushed into an Ambis convenience store with their guns and plundered the store of its money, cigarettes, and a laptop. Then they stole an iPhone and that’s when everything went downhill.

Apple released its iOS 6.0.2 update over-the-air to select devices earlier this week, promising a fix for a frustrating bug that could impact Wi-Fi performance. However, the update comes with a nasty problem of its own. There are reports that it has greatly reduced battery life on the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini — even when the devices go unused for long periods of time.

Would you pay $53 for these Apple logo speakers? They’re beautiful right? Granny apple green cut in the precise shape of a famous Cupertino computer company’s logo. They’re mighty, just like Apple’s old mouse, except they probably got bass for days too, and I need me some bass cause I’m bossy.

We’re not exactly sure where you can purchase these stunning speakers, but we want them. According to Reddit you can find them at retail locations in Europe, and a Google search led us to this Direct Promotions website that let’s you purchase them in bulk. If you find out where to get them please let me know. My Jony Ive shrine needs some sitar music flowing from these holy speakers.

Apple’s quest for litigation has resulted in a few wins and a few loses. However, it would seem the big picture isn’t looking so good for Apple. The very patents Apple has been attempting to assert in its litigation crusade are now coming under high scrutiny and slowly being invalidated.

Over at his blog, Don Melton — the guy behind Safari and WebKit — has a fascinating post up about the many possible names Apple CEO Steve Jobs tested on friends and colleagues for the company’s web browser before settling on “Safari.”

They were all terrible. “Freedom” was one strong candidate, among other terrible options like “Alexander” and “iBrowse.”

As Apple slowly but surely turns its back on Google, Siri, its intelligent digital assistant, is doing the same. If you’d have asked Siri a question back in June, there’s a 60% chance the data it came back with would have been from Google. Ask it a question today, however, and that chance is reduced to just 30%. Not only has Apple given YouTube and Google Maps the boot, then, it’s shunning Google’s search data, too.

If you pop into your local Microsoft store and ask for a demonstration of Windows 8, there’s a chance the store assistant will disappear and send over an 11-year-old child to help you. That’s what the company is doing in Portugal in an effort to prove its new operating system is so intuitive, even a child can use it. Either that or it’s taking advantage of cheap child labor.

Dropbox — our favorite cloud-based storage solution next to the iCloud — has been hinting that it wants to be a major presence in the online photo gallery business, and now they’ve taken another step towards that goal, purchasing photo sharing and organizing tool Snapjoy for an undisclosed amount.

Apple’s App Store is widely considered the king of mobile marketplaces — even Android fanatics will admit that it offers a greater selection of high-quality apps and games. But it’s Google Play that’s currently seeing the most growth, according to the latest data from app analytics firm Distimo, while the App Store enjoys more than four times as much revenue.

ZeptoLab, the creators of the hugely popular Cut the Rope, just released their latest iOS game. It’s called Pudding Monsters, and it promises to be a deliciously addictive puzzle adventure filled with whacky characters and “innovative stick-’em-together game-play.” Check out the launch trailer below.