This Cult of Mac Deals offering has the following qualities: It’s a protective phone case, it’s a wallet, it’s killing two birds with one stone and looking classier than Burt Reynolds in a crushed-velvet suit while doing it. So if you like luxury and functionality in one sleek package, this deal is going to be for you.

The Windsor iPhone 5/5s Sleeve Case is made from genuine Italian leather and a luxurious micro-suede lining to keep your phone looking good while staying protected. It’s also a wallet that can hold 8 cards, so if you’re looking for sleek protection and space-saving functionality, this is it. And it’s just $39.99 through this Cult of Mac Deals special offer!

Some materials have integrity. Consider aluminum, Jony Ive’s material of choice, and then compare it to plastic. Under the skin, plastic feels wholly artificial, a lump of congealed and polished chemicals; in feel and smell, there’s something unnatural and slightly impure about it. But aluminum feels clean. It has texture. It isn’t just a facade: It is true to itself, right on down through.

Another material with integrity is wood. It is true to itself, from the veneer to the grain. It has texture. It is clean. And it has history. Wood actually picks up the oils from your hands, and develops a patina. And because of its innate qualities, wood pairs exquisitely with Jony Ive’s chosen material of integrity: aluminum.

Which brings us to Twelve South’s latest product, the BookArc möd. An organic, well-crafted version of the accessory maker’s popular BookArc stand, it is a laptop dock that offers every bit as much integrity as the MacBook it is meant to house… both different and complementary at once.

This week we look at lightweight, easy-to-carry camera bags that are perfect for carrying a mirrorless camera, an iPad and a couple of other bits – because the days of crushing your shoulders with a giant backpack filled with DSLRs and MacBook Pros are over.

Google has made it super simple to share the photos you’ve backed up to Google+ directly from Gmail on the web. When composing a new email message, users can click the insert photos button to directly insert “Auto Backup” images with just a few clicks.

Hot on the heels of this morning’s leak of the alleged front panel of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, a new photo purportedly shows the battery of Apple’s next-gen smartphone. The image seems to support rumors of a larger iPhone, requiring a larger battery.

Apple has chosen LG as its sole supplier for flexible displays to be used in the iWatch, according to a new report coming out of Korea.

The report suggests that Apple is aiming to sell 9 million iWatch units by the end of 2014, that the device will be launched in September, and that the iWatch will come in two different sizes (1.3 inches and 1.5 inches).

A single image showing what appears to be a larger iPhone screen has shown up on Chinese microblogging website Weibo.

The photo — posted by user jiezhixc on Tuesday — depicts what looks like a current generation iPhone 5s being held up as comparison, showing how significantly larger the iPhone 6 could potentially be.

Ever have that situation at school where a teacher who doesn’t seem to like you gives you a bizarrely good end-of-year grade?

That seems to be the case with Apple’s court-appointed monitor Michael Bromwich, who describes the company as being off to a “promising start” with its antitrust compliance program, after being last year found liable for conspiring to raise e-book prices.

Apple’s relationship with Bromwich appeared strained from the very start — with Apple objecting to Bromwich’s “unprecedented” first legal bill ($138,432 for his first two weeks’ work), along with his requests to access top Apple executives.

Oh man. It looks like “fairly well designed photo-storage and viewing services” are the new black. Or something. Now Amazon is back in the game with an updated version of Amazon Cloud Drive Photos, an app with a name only a Microsoft worker drone could love.

What’s new? Nothing less than the return of enjoyment.

Effect Stack is an OS X image editor that costs just $10 and weighs in at 3.9MB. It’ll process any image your throw at it, including RAW files, and its gimmick is that you can stack effects (hence the name) and shift the layers of this stack to switch things up.

It’s not bad.

You know how when you pull that rank-looking piece of meat from the fridge, you don’t really know whether it’ll fill you or kill you? Is that chunk of chicken still fresh? Should you grill that fish or toss it?

Now (or soon anyway), you can use the Peres to answer those questions. It’s an electronic nose that sniffs your meat and tells you whether it’s still good to eat.

In the olden days, format snobbery was a little bigger. Real photographers used medium format cameras, stuffed with big rolls of 120 or 220 film, and they laughed at folks who struggled by with little toy “full-frame” 35mm cameras.

These medium format cameras were also distinctly old school, without much automatic control.

Back then, the Pentax 645 was an odd camera, an affordable medium format camera with auto-everything. Well, not everything, but way more than you’d get in the Mamiyas and Hasselblads at the time.

Which is all to introduce the Pentax 645Z, Ricoh’s new 51.5 megapixel body with a price tag of $8,500, not much more than a top-of-the-line full frame SLR body.

Let’s face it, touchscreen controls just aren’t the same as old fashioned, plastic buttons. Free emulators on the iPhone make it easy to play classic games, but the D-pad doesn’t translate very well to a touchscreen.

If you’re feeling particularly nostalgic for the days of the Game Boy, an iPhone accessory called the G-pad hopes to give you the best of both worlds.

Revelations of the catastrophic Heartbleed bug shook the Internet last week with news that over two-thirds of web servers were vulnerable to the security hole, but it turns out end-users are also susceptible to the bug, including millions of Android smartphones.

Most Apple fans would undoubtedly love to have CarPlay in their vehicles. But unless you shell out for a brand new whip from the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes, you’re out of luck.

Well, at least for now.

A new report claims that Apple and Alpine Electronics are working on an aftermarket version of CarPlay that will go on sale this fall.

David Fincher, who was previously rumored to direct Sony’s movie about Steve Jobs, is now out of the picture. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fincher and Sony have parted ways due to disagreements over “compensation and control.”

And if Fincher is out, that means his top pick to play Jobs, Christian Bale, will probably not be involved with the project either.

If busting out your iPhone to catalog your #outfitoftheday is just too tedious, meet the mirror that will take your selfie game to the next level.

S.E.L.F.I.E (Self Enhancing Live Feed Image Engine) looks like your average mirror, but behind the shiny glass facade is a Mac Mini-powered selfie machine that features facial recognition tech so all you have to do is smile snap your picture.

Here’s how it works:

The Samsung Galaxy SII might not be the hottest phone on the market right now, but it still has a 1.2 GHz Dual Core processor, crisp 4.52″ screen, and dual cameras packed into an elegant design.

And you can get the entire package – a best-selling smartphone primed with unlimited talk, text, 500MB of 4G/3G data every month, and FreedomPop Premier for six months – for only $199 courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

My biggest qualm with the stock Messages app is its lack of a quick reply feature.

A new jailbreak tweak called Auki was released yesterday at JailbreakCon, and it works like the Messages app Apple should have made in iOS 7. In terms of elegance and simplicity, Auki leapfrogs tweaks like biteSMS that came before. It’s quick reply done right, then some.

The idea of aliens invading earth is a theory that has been created and expanded upon for many years. In the app Captain Bubblenaut the invasion comes to life as players help guide an alien as he obliterates Erf and all erflings standing in his way. Drag your finger across the screen to help guide Captain Bubblenaut to victory. How many erflings do you think you can destroy for a spot on top of the high-score charts?

Take a look at the video and see what you think.

When you’re using OS X, you can search the web for any term you can right click on. You simply do so and then choose “Search Google for [highlighted word].”

In iOS, there doesn’t appear to be any way to do the same thing.

There is, however, a work around.

According to Apple, its App Nap advanced technology feature in Mavericks helps you save power when you’re working with more than one app at a time. The system knows when a certain app is in the background, completely hidden by other apps’ windows. When that app isn’t doing anything, then, OS X will slow the app down, keeping it from using up CPU cycles, and thus battery power.

It’s a great feature, and one of the reasons why your Macbook may seem to have more battery life than it used to, thanks to Mavericks.

When switching to a napping app, it can seem to take a couple of seconds for OS X to get that app back up to speed. If you want to reduce the start up time of a napped app, you can disable App Nap for it.

Spring is here, and–holy crap, do you see that bird? No, the other bird. It’s over by the tree. No, the tree by the shrub. Yeah. That bird there. Do we have those here, or is it some kind of bird-stranger?

Local Birds will help keep inane, interminable thought processes like that one from happening. You tell it your location, and it shows you birds in order of commonality to your region. So when I told people the other day that I saw a Western Scrub Jay, and they were like, “Nuh-uh,” and I was all, “Uh-huh”?

I can totally prove that that was possible now.

Source:Local Birds – Free | Thomas Benner

I have a really random PlayStation 2 game on my shelf called Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color. It came out in North America in 2002, and it was basically a game in which you drew your own Pokémon and then made them fight.

Animal-abuse undertones aside, it was at least an interesting concept, and MonsterCrafter Pro follows in that same proud, if morally gray, tradition. But instead of drawing your murder-pets, you build them out of Minecraft blocks.

It’s a weird game for sure, but it has its charms.