Cult of Mac

Look, Legos are for everyone, ok? With the huge success of the latest Lego Movie, it’s clear that playing with the building bricks isn’t just for kids anymore, if it ever was.

If you’ve been in a comic, toy, or hobby shop lately, chances are you’ve seen the little random minifigure bags that you can buy, not knowing exactly which minifigure is contained within, like a mini treasure hunt.

Funcom is banking on this craze with its upcoming release of Lego Minifigures Online for iPad, Android tablets, and PC, hoping to trade on the fact that one of the coolest features of the modern Lego experience is the little people that seem to come with every construction model set sold.

Sadly, there’s no Mac version planned as yet, but the iPad game will play the same as the PC and Android versions, on the same servers.

Cult of Mac saw a preview of Pirate World for Lego Minifigures Online last week at GDC, and we’re finally allowed to post it below.

The day has finally come. During a keynote today in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled the Office suite for iPad. Rumors have said that Word would be unveiled for Apple’s tablet this month, but that’s not all; Microsoft has also released versions of PowerPoint and Excel.

Sure, you can ask Siri to call one of your contacts; it’s one of the ways I make calls handsfree in the car. Simply say, “Call Kim” (or the name of the contact you’d like to call–you may not know Kim), and Siri will place a voice call to that Contact.

Did you know, however, that Siri can handle even more complexity? Yes, yes it can.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include _____, _____, and _____.

Here you go:

Idea Maker Flashcards is a new app that hopes to get your creativity going by showing you different ways to think about and approach your work. It also includes video examples of each of them for you visual learners out there.

It’s intended mostly for marketers and public-relations folks, but even people outside of those industries might be interested in some of the projects. Like the story of the Dortmund Concert Hall, which raised its attendance and membership by selling milk from cows that had listened to the upcoming symphonic program.

No, really.

Idea Maker Flashcards – Free | Hoboglobal Intergalaktik

Picking the right word can be challenging. Or maybe you’re just trying to make yourself sound smart by using something that would be a formidable figure on a Scrabble board. Either way, Thesaurasize can get you those synonyms but quick. All you do is type in the boring word you’re starting with, and it spits out a list of other candidates.

Just make sure you read the definitions Thesaurasize provides so that you know what the synonyms mean, though. You don’t want come off sounding fatuitous.

Thesaurasize – Free | Next Wave Services Inc.

I’ve always been interested in origami, but it’s been hard to find directions that consistently make sense. It’s all dashed lines and dotted lines and arrows pointing in vague directions, and it’s supposed to be relaxing, damn it. But Origami Club is here to help you out with video tutorials in which a pair of helping hands walk you through the entire process, even pausing occasionally to point out details on potentially complicated steps.

The videos are also surprisingly calming just to watch even if you don’t end up with a little mouse or whatever. But I think you want to end up with a little mouse.

Origami Club – Free | Alexey Liger

Your days of endlessly hitting “Refresh” to see if a price has come down may be over (unless you like that sort of thing). Punchr is a new app that will monitor any part of a web page for updates and then let you know when it happens. You just navigate to the site and then select the part of it you want to look out for, and it’ll send you a push notification if something changes.

So now you can spend less time refreshing Twitter when it’s down and more time taking pictures of your lunch to post on Twitter when it returns.

Punchr Page Monitor – Free | BitMelter Ltd

I don’t have a lot of time to read, so it’s always nice to find an app to help me out there. SprintReader employs <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_serial_visual_presentation”rapid serial visual presentation to let you read one of a selection of classic (i.e. public-domain) works with haste.

You get a box, and the words appear one at a time. They always appear in the same place, so you just plunk your eyes there and let the text come to you. The selections are a bit limited right now, but if you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, now might be a good time.

SprintReader – Free | Robert McBride

If your Internet connection is dragging, and you have no idea why, NetHero can offer some helpful tips to get you back up to speed. You just register, and it will check out all the devices on your home network to give you a general idea of whether or not they’re working properly. You can also download the app to your individual devices like your laptop to run speed checks and get alerts and advice that will hopefully get your devices running better and save you some aggrivation.

Source:NetHero – Free | Pie Digital

I like Scrabble and poker, and I’ve often wished that there were some way to combine them. We could call it “Scroker.” Or “Pabble.”

I haven’t, actually, because who would think of doing that? Plus, those awesome names are copyright me. Don’t steal them.

Anyway, Ayopa Games did think of it, and now we have Words and Cards, a catchy and fun social mobile game that will have you spelling and trying to remember if a flush is better than a straight. Spoiler alert: It is.

When he set out to create the iPhone, Steve Jobs deliberately picked engineers with no mobile phone industry experience because he didn’t want Apple’s smartphone to be “tainted” by old ideas about what could and could not be achieved, says a former software engineer who worked on the project.

“We had the opportunity to hire people from Palm, from Nokia, to help us build this thing. [But] Steve said, ‘No, no, we don’t need to do that,'” Andy Grignon told me during a recent onstage interview at the DENT conference on innovation in Sun Valley, Idaho.

If you want a fast, discreet way to determine when you’ve had too much to drink or put a number on all of your inebriated muscle flexing, then Cult of Mac Deals has you covered. With the small and affordable BACtrack Keychain Breathalyzer, you can quickly estimate your blood alcohol content (BAC) .

The BACtrack Breathalyzer Keychain is small enough to keep in your pocket, and accurate enough to keep your keys there as well, if necessary. The folding mouthpiece pulls out during testing and slides back down during storage. As one of the smallest, sleekest breathalyzers on the market – it also delivers reliable blood alcohol estimates in just five seconds. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $24.99.

Russian government officials have ditched the iPad in favor of Samsung-made tablets according to a recent report. The move was supposedly made to “ensure tighter security.”

Russia’s telecoms minister Nikolai Nikiforov notes that Russian officials switched over to Samsung tablets “not so long ago,” and noted that the new tablets are “specially protected devices that can be used to work with confidential information.”

Apple’s possible plans for an iPad smart cover reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface were revealed in a patent application published Thursday. The design differs from Microsoft’s iPad competitor in that Apple’s keyboard would double as a Multi-Touch gesture keyboard, eliminating the need for a touchpad.

Drawings filed with the patent show how it would be possible to use the iPad cover in various configurations. Several hinges allow the iPad smart cover to fold away with the tablet and keyboard, while the cover would feature magnets to lock its various components in place. In one embodiment of the patent, Apple suggests that electromagnets could be used.

Would you pay an extra $100 for an iPhone “phablet” with a larger display?

At least 33% of you would, according to new survey data published by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt. The study suggests a third of U.S. iPhone users would be willing to pay an extra hundred bucks for an iPhone with a larger display than its predecessors.

When Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg said virtual reality was the natural follow-up to mobile as a platform. And while Apple might have missed the boat on Oculus, has Cupertino really missed out on virtual reality?

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Apple has been investigating this area for the better part of a decade — well before the Oculus Rift gaming headset appeared on Kickstarter.

This week in Review Roundup we look at luxury leathery book-a-like iPhone cases. All three are made to last, with real leather or bookbindery covers. Two are ultra tough, one is a little more low-profile, and all three will probably last you forever. But which one is best?

The Candidates

Pad & Quill’s Luxury Pocket Book, a wood-framed, leather covered wallet case with space for some cash.

Davarg’s Kanam is a simple wraparound flap of leather with a (somewhat reusable) sticky pad that glues the iPhone into place. It’s less bulky than the other two, and very nice looking.

Meison Morgan’s Handmade Case is a lot like the Luxury Pocket Book, only it has a bookbindery cover instead of leather.

Let the contest begin:

Meison Morgan’s Handmade iPhone 5s Case Is A Beauty 

Manufactured in Greece using the same bookbinding process that traditional notebook makers use, this case offers not only good looks, but also all-round protection that promises to withstand the test of time.

It’s available in black and denim (blue), and it’s super affordable at €30 ($46).

On the whole, the Meison Morgan is a fantastic iPhone case that looks great and offers plenty of protection. It’s also relatively inexpensive at €30. But the experience is marred somewhat by a couple of issues that could so easily be fixed.

If its makers can iron out those problems, then I’d have no reservations about recommending this case.

Buy it $46

P&Q Luxury Pocket Book Is The iPhone Wallet Of Kings

The Luxury Pocket Book is a leather-bound book with a Baltic beechwood insert, a leather lining and slots inside the front cover for credit cards and cash (bills, not coins). It has cutouts for all your ports and buttons, plus a hole in the back for the camera and flash.

Lastly, there’s an elastic strap to hold it closed, just like on a Moleskine notebook.

Buy it $85

Like Fine Wine, Davarg’s Case Will Only Get Better With Age 

The Kanam is a book-like wraparound cover which protects the back, the front and one edge. Unlike the SurfacePad, the Kanam protects the right edge, opening backwards (or forwards if you’re one of those manga weirdos). This leaves the mute and volume switches free to be used. There’s also a small cutout over the phone speaker so you can talk with the case closed and still hear the conversation.

The iPhone 5 itself is held in place with a sticky, reusable adhesive pad. You just clean the back of the phone, peel off the protective waxed sheet (setting it aside in case you ever need to take the iPhone out of this case) and stick. It holds just fine.

Buy it $52

The winner? The Pad&Quill Luxury Pocket Book. Why? It’s expensive, but it’s made to last. The Meison Case is already falling apart in our review, and the Davarg is bulky without adding any extra features. The P&Q case wins for a combination of craftsmanship and clever design.

Can we all agree that iTunes’ App Store search is truly, truly awful? That you can not only never find what you’re looking for, but you have to wait forever for the results to load?

Good. Then you’re going to love Fnd, a web-based search tool for the whole iTunes Store. It’s accurate, fast and not at all annoying.

Fotobit is a 4.25 x 4.25-inch frame designed for wall-mounting your Instagrams. It’s modular, so you can slot the frames together to cover the wall with an Insta-mural, and the frames themselves are a handsome matte black or white. But there’s more.

Sharebox adds a feature to Dropbox that should probably already have been there: it lets you drag and drop files onto the Dropbox icon in your Mac’s menubar, and have them upload to Dropbox. The neatest part is that it works using the existing icon, keeping your menubar clear.

Twitter will now let you attach up to four images to a Tweet, and tag the people in those photos, all without counting towards your 140-character limit. This is a pretty obvious attempt to beat Instagram and make Twitter your go-to sharing service.

When Facebook snapped up virtual-reality company Oculus VR this week, it got us wondering what other interesting startups Apple might want to buy before Mark Zuckerberg can get his hands on them.

While Oculus is most well known for its Rift gaming headset, Zuckerberg sees a far more wide-ranging application for the company’s VR tech, envisioning it as a futuristic communications platform. “One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people,” he said in his post about the acquisition.

That’s the kind of big thinking Steve Jobs brought to the table when he talked about the way the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad would change the way people interact with technology. While Apple rarely dips into its $150 billion cash hoard to buy other hardware firms, here are seven awesome companies whose technology could help Cupertino enhance and improve its existing devices — as well as build entirely new ones.

We all have busy days, and going to sleep at night is the perfect remedy for having to do it all over the next day. While regular alarm clocks can serve their purpose in waking you up, they can’t ensure they’ll do it at the most convenient time in your sleep. The app Sleep Cycle strives to wake you up while you’re in your lightest sleep, resulting in a better awakening. Simply place your phone on your bed and let the app do the rest. Will Sleep Cycle become your go-to alarm clock?

Take a look at the video and find out what you think.

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the iOS application Sleep Cycle, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

It’s not that often that the Mac gamers out there get to download new content for a big title game like BioShock Infinite on the same day as their Windows-using brethren, but here it is.

Well-known Mac gaming company Aspyr has done just that, announcing on Wednesday that the latest and final episode of BioShock Infinite’s story-driven “Burial At Sea” module has just dropped on the Mac.

Disruptor Beam and HBO revealed on Wednesday the debut of Game of Thrones Ascent on the iPad. It was originally released in 2013 as a Facebook game, making last year’s Facebook Games of the Year list to boot.

Now you can play Game of Thrones Ascent on your iPad, leading the life of a noble in Westeros, collaborating and conniving with other players in a persistent online world.

Tiny portable bluetooth speakers are all the rage these days, and we’ve seen our fair share of them.

Trouble is, the smaller the speaker, the worse it sounds. Honestly, if your bluetooth speaker sounds worse than the built-in speakers on your iPhone, you’ll likely not want to go through the trouble of even pairing the thing up.

The Music Cup bluetooth speaker is small, shaped like a mug, and it sounds pretty darn good.

For the company behind Candy Crush, developer King Digital don’t exactly seem to be crushing it in their public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares in the popular developer — which grossed $1.88 billion last year — were valued at $22.50 on Tuesday. They then debuted at $20.50 on Wednesday, before quickly dipping to $19.06.

I should warn you now, the iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei is perhaps the most bewildering game you’ll play on your phone. The game world is unforgivingly nondescript, and you navigate it in first person. It’s very easy to get lost indoors and bypass important people and doors until you get the hang of navigating. I recommend you pause briefly before entering any room to see if a nameplate appears — otherwise you’ll be running in circles. Also, Atlus’ strange control panel shell for SMT is a little unwieldy. I played in landscape mode in order to take screenshots, but I highly recommend playing in portrait mode as the interface buttons are smaller, easier to reach, and not covering the game screen.

You start off in the midst of a terrifying dream where spirits are being tormented by demons. You rescue your future teammates by saying their names, which breaks the demons’ hold. And suddenly, you wake up. A ghastly murder in a parking lot has set your bustling city on edge and a weird man named Steven is constantly sending you information about a demon summoning program. Yet your mother still wants you to go out and get coffee.

I don’t have a lot of time to read, so it’s always nice to find an app to help me out there. SprintReader employs rapid serial visual presentation to let you read one of a selection of classic (i.e. public-domain) works with haste.

You get a box, and the words appear one at a time. They always appear in the same place, so you just plunk your eyes there and let the text come to you. The selections are a bit limited right now, but if you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, now might be a good time.

Source:SprintReader – Free | Robert McBride