Back in April, Facebook decided to acquire Instagram for a staggering $1 billion. After the acquisition was announced initially, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an antitrust investigation that barred the deal from going through. In essence, Instagram hasn’t actually been touched by Facebook yet.
Today the FTC approved Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, but the deal is worth $747 million instead of the original $1 billion.
The 2012 U.S. presidential election is only months away. Leading up to election day, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will continue debating one another and fervently addressing the “issues’ in passionate speeches and ad spots.
Obama and Romney go head-to-head in a new iOS game developed by the makers of Infinity Blade, and well, you get the idea.
If you thought the heat of the mobile payments industry might cool a bit after weeks of major announcements like the Square/Starbucks partnership, the launch of a new mobile payment company dubbed MCX by several national retail chains, and PayPal’s trial of in-restaurant payments at McDonald’s locations in France, think again.
PayPal announced the biggest partnership yet in the U.S. mobile payments market today – a deal with Discover that will bring PayPal in-store payment to seven million locations next spring.
Good news for our readers up north: Spotify should be available in Canada very soon. An exact date hasn’t been announced by Spotify, however.
As part of the music streaming service’s expansion plans, certain countries in Asia and South America could possibly be added in the near future as well.
The U.S. federal government may not be where you’d expect to see mobile innovation or find good app development suggestions. While there’s still a public sector bureaucracy in government, a number of government agencies are beginning to develop new ways to connect with citizens and invest in mobile technologies for internal use.
Granted, most agencies are doing so because of requirements under the Obama administration’s 21st Century Digital Government Strategy. One of which is that every federal agency must make two high-value, customer-facing services available via mobile devices over the next year. Still, the innovation is happening and the agencies that have already taken up the challenge are good models for agencies that have yet to do so.
They’re also good sources of advice for any organization that is beginning to develop an iOS or mobile app strategy.
Today Google updated its Chrome browser in the iOS App Store with the ability to share webpages to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. By updating now, Google has beaten Apple’s own Safari browser to the punch. Safari in iOS can share directly to Twitter, and Facebook integration is coming in the fall with iOS 6. Google+ integration is not offered, and given Apple and Google’s rocky relationship, don’t expect to see it ever.
We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac and right now we’re having a big contest where readers can win a free bag from Waterfield Designs. All you gotta do is pour out the contents of your bag, snap a pic, upload it, and maybe you’ll win.
It’s probably not fair of us to demand you reveal all the goodies in your bags without showing you some of our own toys, so today we’re jumping inside the bag of Cult of Mac Social Media Editor, Buster Heine, to see everything he carries with him to have a good time.
You’re looking at what might possibly be the next iPhone charger cable you use for the new iPhone. It might be a fake, but it does appear similar to leaked 8-pin connector parts we saw earlier this month.
The photo of the charge/sync cable was floating around Twitter earlier today, coming from a representative of Veister.com. The Shenzhen, China-based company manufactures iPhone accessories and chargers, but the cable hasn’t appeared on the company’s site yet, and it’s unclear whether the part show is a replacement cable, or a geniune pre-production Apple part.
Source: iLounge
Apple’s controversial “Genius” TV ads have been unofficially killed. While Cupertino hasn’t said anything about the ads, they’ve removed the TV spots from their YouTube channel and the Apple.com marketing page. Apple stopped airing the ads on television days after they were introduced because of criticism that the ads made Mac users look clueless.
The new system sounds for OS X just aren’t as cool and quirky as they once were back in 80s. Remember the duck quack, and the monkey screech, and — oh yeah — that moo-ing sound? Genius!
Apple got rid of all those gems in OS X, but there’s actually a way to bring them back to your Mac if you’re feeling nostalgic. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz breaks it down real quick and easy on how to get the vintage Mac sounds on your new Mac.
Here’s how to do it:
Over the past several months, we’ve seen studies on the reactions that iPad and iPhone users have to mobile marketing initiatives. Often these studies suggest that the iPad is a golden opportunity for marketing professionals. We’ve also seen the ways that companies are shooting themselves in the foot by not taking advantage of the unique capabilities of mobile devices, particularly when it comes to the iPad and other tablets.
So what does it take to develop a successful mobile marketing campaign? It takes a real understanding of the advantages and disadvantages that mobile devices offer, understanding their place in a consumer’s daily life, and recognition that mobile marketing needs to treated as part of a brand strategy.
Even in 2012, people still insist on giving us paper: bills, receipts, even business cards (!) all come printed on dead treeware, and all remain completely useless, unsearchable and easy to lose. What you need, until these people wake up and just e-mail you the relevant info — is a document scanner. Smaller and faster than all-in-one or flatbed models, these scanners can take a stack of paper and turn it into searchable PDFs faster than you can shred the source material.
Read on for our list of the best document scanners to use with your Mac, iPad or iPhone.
Although a lot of people are clamoring to finally have a proper 4G Phone when Apple’s next device is released next month, how important is LTE to the average consumer? Not very, it looks like.
Seems like everyone nowadays is trying to build something off of Instagram. We’ve seen cameras and printers that look like the Instagram icon, but nothing we’d ever really want, except maybe this new idea, called the Instacube.
Instacube is basically just a digital photoframe – you know, the kind that were almost popular back in 2006? Except it connects to Instagram and lets you view pictures from any feed on Instagram, or follow certain hashtags. You could even set it up in your living room and connect it to your own Instagram feed to show all your house guests how you’re a totally badass iPhoneographer, or something.
The first gameplay footage of Wild Blood, Gameloft’s first title built off of the Unreal Engine, has slashed its way to YouTube. This third-person hack-and-slash puts you inside the armor of the famed adulterer Sir Lancelot, who has betrayed his King by sleeping with his wife (big no, no).
Many school districts around the country are embarking on new territory this back to school season – deploying hundreds or thousands of iPads to students. Most of the deployments will be one-to-one initiatives where every student receives a school-owned iPad to use for this school year or their entire scholastic career. Planning such a roll out isn’t easy, but schools and districts making the shift this year have the advantage of looking what worked and didn’t work from counterparts that pioneered the iPad in the classroom last year.
One school district, Lexington County School District One of South Carolina, has served as a model for many other schools around the country. The district offers a lot of insight into the technical requirements, education policy issues, and roll out processes in such a colossal undertaking.
Several major retailers across the United States are seeing stock shortages of the 27-inch iMac as we approach Apple’s rumored September 12 event, sparking speculation that the popular all-in-one could be in line to receive a refresh alongside the iPhone 5 (and possibly even an iPad mini).
T-Mobile isn’t exactly the carrier of choice these days. After their failed merger with AT&T, they seem to be lost in carrier limbo. Verizon and AT&T have the largest 4G LTE coverage, Sprint has the only true unlimited data plans, and all three of them offer the iPhone. So where does that leave T-Mobile? T-Mobile knows it has to do something, and it appears that something, is unlimited data for $20 a month.
AT&T upset a lot of customers when it revealed that it would only allow those subscribed to its new Mobile Share data plans to access FaceTime over 3G/4G on their iOS devices. Today it has responded to that upset by explaining that because FaceTime is a feature built into the iPhone — and not one that is downloaded by the user — the company can disable it as it wishes and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Folding Text is a Mac app from Hog Bay Software’s Jesse Grosjean, and it’s kind of like a cross between a text editor and a terminal. It’s a beta, or maybe even an alpha, but the latest release is good enough to use as a full-time Markdown editor, and it also packs some neat extras.
When Twitter released its new guidelines last week, it quickly became clear that third-party clients would be hit hardest by the company’s latest rules. However, it seems third-party developers aren’t quite as concerned as the rest of us. Tapbots quickly confirmed that Tweebot development wouldn’t change, and now Iconfactory has confirmed that it will continue development on an “all-new” Twitterrific as planned — unfazed by Twitter’s new rules.
Using banners for your notifications — rather than full-blown alerts we had to suffer prior to iOS 5 — is a great way to ensure incoming alerts stay out of your way while you’re busy sending tweets, chopping fruit, or writing emails. However, it would be nice if those banners could be even slimmer — maybe the same size of the status bar.
Thanks to DietBulletin, they can be.
A rare iPhone 4 “N90” prototype has surfaced on eBay with a strange prototype logo, or “protologo,” on its rear panel. Its seller insists it is the first iPhone 4 prototype to be listed on the online auction site, and they’re currently looking for starting bids of $4,500, or $10,000 for an instant sale.
In an investor note today, Barclays investment analyst Ben Reitzes comes down squarely on the side of many others who believe a set top box is the way Apple has “cracked” the TV scene, rather than with an integrated television set created by Apple hardware designers. His opinion is that Apple is more likely to create a TV product that focuses on the software and not the hardware.
“We believe consumers would welcome such a product from Apple,” wrote Rietzes, “as well given that many younger customers seem to be watching content on demand on smaller screens (iPads, laptops) in private places – and only Apple seems to be the company that can redirect that content back to the big screen.”
Hey, everyone, it’s Back To School time, and students everywhere will need to take part in a time honored tradition – taking notes. IRIS, originally an OCR software company, announced today the availability of two new digital note taking pens that will take handwritten notes and turn them into editable text. The IRISNotes2 Express and Executive pens will fit different needs and budgets, but should prove a boon to anyone – especially students – who need to take fast notes and then get them into a digital format.