Except eight. You can’t do eight days a week, which is really a lost opportunity as far as I’m concerned.

If, however, you’d like a quick an easy way to get two, three, four, five, or six days in your Calendar “week” view, read on.

You’ll need to launch Calendar, and then hit Command-1 on your keyboard to place Calendar into Day view, first though. Trust me.

Biographics — Books — Free

We’ve already covered multimedia platform Narr8’s transition from iPad to iPhone, but this week, the company released a standalone app just for biographical comics about some of history’s great thinkers and doers. Biographics offers 13 “episodes” that offer tons of information about some fascinating figures. The first two episodes, which cover Nikola Tesla and Sigmund Freud, are free, and the rest are available for $0.99 each. Subjects include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Vlad Dracula, and Martin Luther King.

That’s a lot of ground they’re covering, there.

Biographics – Narr8 Limited

What do monsters, Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series of chaotic fighting games, and steampunk have in common?

Nothing, you guys. Absolutely nothing.

But those are all elements in Fright Fight, a new free-to-play, online-multiplayer brawler that has players controlling a variety of spooky monsters in fights to the death atop floating platforms. It’s chaotic, insane, and mostly fun.

It’s a Frankenstein’s Creature of disparate parts cobbled together, and the arcane force that brings it to lurching life is in-app purchases.

In a little over two weeks, a ton of people will make the trek to Austin, Texas for the annual South By Southwest conference. Commonly known as SXSW, many people have made the pilgrimage to the event year in and year out…and 2014 will be no different.

Whether you’re planning on returning to SXSW again this year or are making the trip for the first time. Cult of Mac Deals has assembled a survival kit that will help you take advantage of every opportunity this massive event has to offer. The South By Southwest Tech Survival Kit consists of The Karma 4G Hotspot and The Portable Power Bank – regularly priced at $159 — for only $99.95 during this limited time promotion.

It’s been a while since Samsung mocked Apple and its iOS devices to sell its latest smartphones and tablets, but if you thought the South Korean company had moved past all that, you can think again.

It has today published two new videos via its official YouTube channel that mock the iPhone and the iPad to sell the Galaxy Note 3 and the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1.

The death of Flappy Bird has brought out more ridiculous knock-offs than should be permissible by the standards of the Geneva Convention. It’s gotten so bad Apple and Google decided to ban them, but the one Flappy Bird knock-off we’d love to play isn’t on the App Store either, it’s in a box.

Fawn Qiu decided to make an IRL version of Flappy Bird using nothing more than a box, an Arduino sensor, two servo motors, a reed switch, magnets and of course, some Flappy Bird artwork.

Players control the bird with the reed switch on the left and if you fail to make it past a set of pipes the box closes.

Check out the video of the project below:

Sapphire glass was in the news again today, thanks to a jump in the share price of GT Advanced Technologies Inc. — the company which will reportedly manufacture the iPhone 6’s sapphire display.

With contrasting reports about sapphire’s advantages over Gorilla Glass, along with counter-reports from Gorilla Glass maker Corning, we figured the time was right to break down some of the questions about Apple’s latest wonder-material.

Apple’s first iTunes Festival for the U.S. will take place at next month’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. It will be held in Moody Theater, home of Austin City Limits, and will feature a whole host of chart-topping artists — including Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Pitbull, Keith Urban, ZEDD, and more.

Google doesn’t want you to be a “Glasshole.”

That’s according to a new list of “do’s” and “don’ts” the company has published with advice for Google Glass wearers.

“Do’s” include exploring the world around you, taking advantage of Glass voice commands, asking for permission when you video people or take their photo, and using screen lock.

“Don’ts” include “glass-outs” — in which you appear to zone out while doing in-depth work on your headset, playing high-impact sports wearing your Google Glass, expecting people around you to ignore the fact that you’re wearing a computer on your face, and being generally creepy or rude.

You know those amazing photos you see taken by the pros using only an iPhone? The stories pop up from time to time, and they all have two things in common: the iPhone, and the incredible shots. Why don’t your iPhone photos look so good?

Part of it it is the knack: These pros have an eye that knows what looks good, and the practice to know what looks bad. But the other part of it is that they know how to use their gear. This article will take us through all the facts about iPhoneography: from how the camera actually works, to extra gear you might like to try, to apps that let you shoot and share. It’s not a top-ten list, but more of a tips-n-tricks article to get you going.

Camera Theory

Don’t worry, I’ll make this interesting. Camera theory is important, because it lets you know what your camera is doing and why. And if you know that, then you can push the boundaries or fix problems. It’s universal, too, whether you’re using an iPhone, a DSLR or a pinhole film camera.

Aperture/Shutter/ISO

This is the triumvirate of camera control. Aperture and shutter speed control the amount of light that gets into the camera and hits the sensor or the film, and ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of the sensor or the film. The trick is, they are all interchangeable, and they are all the same whatever camera you use. ƒ2.8 is ƒ2.8 on your iPhone lens or your giant sports telephoto lens. They literally let in the same amount of light at that setting. And 1/500 sec is one five hundredth of a second wherever you are (relativity notwithstanding).

Exposure is measured in “stops,” thanks to the click stops on lenses and shutter-speed dials. One click will add one stop more or one stop less of light. Here’re the terms:

• Aperture is the hole in the lens. Opening it up lets in more light. Closing it cuts light out. Each hole lets in double the light of the hole before (or half, depending on which direction you’re going in). That last part is important.
• Shutter speed is a measure of the time the shutter stays open. A shutter can be a metal curtain or an electronic screen that flicks from black to clear and back, but the time it is open for is the “shutter speed.” Each stop lets in double (or half) the light of the previous one on the dial. 1/2 sec is open for double the time of 1/4 sec, for instance, and lets in double the light.
• ISO Also known as “film speed,” ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of film. The numbers run thusly – 100, 200, 400, 800 and so on, doubling each time. And guess what? Yes, the amount of light needed to get the same image on the film/sensor halves with each step. That is, sensitivity doubles with each stop.

And here’s the trick: You can click the shutter speed up one stop and the aperture down (more open) one stop, and the exact same amount of light will hit the sensor. This used to be easier with manual film cameras fro two reasons. One is that the ISO was effectively fixed once you loaded a film into the camera – to change it you had to change the film for a more sensitive one. And second is that the cameras only changed their settings in full-stop clicks, so you could literally dial a stop on the shutter speed dial and the aperture ring (usually around the lens).

Special Effects

To recap, we now know that setting, say, an aperture of ƒ8 and a shutter speed of 1/500 sec gives the exact same exposure as ƒ11 at 1/250 sec. One click up and one click down. The numbers – especially the ƒ-numbers used for aperture – are confusing but worth taking a short while to study.

This knowledge lets us use the secondary effects of aperture and shutter speed to change the look of our photos, all without affecting the amount of light that hits the sensor. Aperture also affects the “depth-of-field”, or the slice of a picture that’s in focus in your frame. You know those portraits with pin-sharp faces but distraction-free blurred backgrounds? These have a shallow depth-of-field (DOF), achieved by setting the aperture wide open to a low number like ƒ1.8 or ƒ2.

And those neat pictures with the light trails caused by car taillights moving across the frame at night? Long exposure, caused by slow shutter speed. Open up the shutter for a half or a whole second and anything that moves during that second will register as a blur.

Conversely, a fast shutter speed (e.g. 1/2000 sec) freezes action, letting you see individual water droplets in the spray from a canoeist’s paddle or oar or whatever it’s called, and a small aperture (e.g. ƒ16) will give you a photo that’s in focus from front to back, handy for landscapes.

And you can make this choice independent of exposure, thanks to the fact that you can twist both controls in the opposite directions. And with digital you can add ISO into the mix, letting you up the sensitivity in low light to let you keep a fast shutter speed to avoid blur.

Camera Shake Vs Out Of Focus

Speaking of blur, there are two kinds. One is caused by the lens not being in focus, and can be used for good or evil. Evil is when your subjects are are not sharp. Good is when you focus perfectly on those eyes, and leave the background out of focus (see depth-of-field above).

The second kind is when the camera or the subject moves during exposure, and it’s made worse the longer the shutter is open (slower shutter speeds). If the camera is rock steady (on a tripod, say) then only the things that actually move will be blurred, even if you leave the shutter open for many seconds. This knowledge can be used to get those photos where a rushing river turns to ethereal mist around sharp, rain-slicked rocks.

If the camera moves, you get “camera-shake,” where the entire picture is blurred. This is almost always a disaster, and is the reason cameras have flashes on them – to add in enough light that the shutter speed can be kept short enough to avoid blur.

However, even this can be used to your advantage. If you move the camera so the subject stays at the same spot in the frame, swinging your body around to follow a passing cyclist, say, and set a shutter speed of around a half or quarter second, then the subject will stay sharp and the background will blur. This technique is called “panning” and, if you’ll forgive the pun, the results can be gold.

Focal Length

Focal length is – for practical purposes – the measure of how wideangle or telephoto your lens is. Higher numbers mean more magnification (200mm is a telephotos lens) and lower numbers mean less magnification and a wider field-of-view (anything below 35mm is considered wideangle). And for every camera format (aka film size or sensor size) there is also a “normal” focal length, which is neither telephoto or wide, and gives a perspective similar to that of the naked eye (only chopped off at the edges becasue it’s a camera).

For 35mm photography (known as full-frame in digital), the normal length is 50mm. The iPhone 5’s focal length is 4.1mm. Which in terms of 35mm cameras (sorry for all the millimeters here) is the equivalent to 31mm, or a mild wideangle (the 5S is slightly wider at equivalent 29.7mm).

Gear

Lenses Or Lens Case

Lenses will do two things. They’ll let you get closer to or further from your subject, and they’ll change your point of view. A telephoto means you won’t have to walk over to that spectacular monument to fill the frame with it, but it also squashes the perspective in your picture, making it seem flatter, and making objects look closer together than they really are (in the z-axis anyway).

A wideangle will let you fit more into your picture without stepping back, and it also lends an immediacy, giving the viewer the feel of being in the middle of the action. Perspective is dramatized and exaggerated, and people’s noses look huge if you get in close.

The extreme version of a wide angle lens is the fisheye, which distorts the picture so much that the circle of the lens’s view is actually smaller than the frame of your photo, and any straight line that’s not dead-center is bent. One neat trick is to use the fisheye to reverse the crop the iPhone makes when shooting video. Because the iPhone’s video mode crops a section out of the center of the 8MP frame (presumably to let it perform image stabilization), things can get a little cramped when shooting indoors. A fisheye will still add a little distortion, but as the camera is zooming into the center of the frame, it’s less noticeable, and you get back a nice wideangle shot.

There are a few ways to add lenses to your iPhone. You can stick a lens directly over the existing camera lens, for one. I favor the Olloclip for this as it puts several lenses into one clip-on mount that is self-centering over the lens, and the optics are of good quality.

The other way is to use a special case which actually puts a ground-glass screen in front of the iPhone’s lens, and then uses a lens from, say, a 35mm camera to project an image onto that screen. If you ever used an SLR, you’ve seen this in action: the viewfinder is actually showing you the image from the lens projected onto a matte ground-glass screen.

The advantage of this method is that the “sensor size” of your photo can be a lot bigger (as big as the ground-glass screen), which gives you the sweet shallow depth-of-field of a big full-frame camera. Thus you can throw the background way out of focus in your portraits.

The disadvantage is that these kits are big and expensive, so why not just use a bigger camera?

Tripod/Stand

A stand isn’t just for holding the camera while you shoot selfies, and a stand doesn’t have to be a tripod, although a tripod has the advantage of being steady on any surface, and it also allows almost infinite adjustment of the camera’s angle.

The main reason for using a tripod is to avoid camera-shake, letting you take either long-exposure shots, or to stop things from getting blurred when things get darker, and the iPhone camera starts to choose slow shutter speeds to gather enough light.

There are lots of stands out there, though I really never use one for my iPhone unless I’m taking selfies. But I steady my camera in other ways.

If you’re Instagramming your lunch, say, then you can get steady by holding the iPhone in both hands, and resting your elbows on the table. Breathe out (this helps to steady your body) and gently squeeze the shutter button. Don’t stab it, and don’t use the on-screen button either.

In fact, consider shooting all photos with the built-in camera app, especially in low-light. Not all third-party apps use the iPhone 5/S’s high-ISO mode, which boosts the ISO and tries to iron out the extra image noise this causes. A higher ISO means that you can up the shutter speed, too (a stop for a stop, remember?), making the difference between a blurred photo and a sharp but slightly noisier photo. Also, the built-in app lets you use the volume switch as a shutter release, letting you keep both hands firmly on the iPhone for steadier shooting.

If you’re not sitting at a table, look around for something else to steady the camera. Push it up against a lamppost, or prop it on a wall. Failing that, you should gently grip the iPhone in both hands (not too tight or you’ll start shaking), pull your elbows into your body, stand with your feet slightly apart and relax. Breathe out, squeeze. You just became a human tripod (or bipod, I guess).

Lighting

The other thing that’ll make a huge difference to your photos is lighting. Step one, never ever use the built-in flash. Well, maybe in sunlight. What? Yes, sunlight. If your subject’s face is in shadow, and you’re fairly close to them (because the iPhone flash is pretty weak, especially in noonday sun), then you can use the flash to fill-in the shadows, getting a nice even balance of exposure between the bright background and their face.

Once the sun goes down, though, that flash should be switched off. It’ll cause redeye and – worse – white face. If you want your subject to look like a junkie then go ahead. Otherwise ask them not to move too much, and follow the camera-steadying tips above.

Off-camera lighting is tricky with the iPhone as it won’t trigger a flash. But you can artfully arrange table lamps, or drape sheets over windows to make huge soft-boxes that wrap beautiful light around your subject, or even buy LED video lamps and use those. You’ll need to put in some practice to get good results (start with the Strobist’s excellent Lighting 101 series), but you’ll be rewarded with some spectacular shots.

The key is to remember that photography is about light, and the quality is as important as the quantity. I take all the product shots for my reviews using my iPhone, and I manage it not with post-processing, but with careful composition and attention to lighting. North-facing windows are your friend, as even on a sunny day the sky becomes one giant (albeit blue-tinted) softbox. Muslin drapes are amazing light modifiers, and white walls can reflect back enough light to fill shadows and make it look like you added a second light source.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that only a few of these tips were iPhone-specific. That’s because the iPhone camera is just another camera. And it’s easily as good as the best cameras of a few years ago.

The one trick you need to remember is that the camera doesn’t matter. The pro photographer can take a good picture with any gear, because s/he pays attention to things like exposure, and framing, and lighting. Without those things, even a Leica or a Nikon D4 will turn out crappy pictures. But with them, the results from your iPhone can embarrass those from the expensive DSLR from the gear dork standing next to you, with the added bonus that you don’t have to carry a ten kilo bag of crap around to get the job done.

According to numbers from analyst firm IDC, Apple is now the fifth-largest cellphone maker in China, with 7% of the overall market share.

Apple jumped an entire 1 percent in the last quarter of 2013, based on the success of the iPhone 5s and 5c. This doesn’t take into account the impact of Apple’s deal with China Mobile, which began selling handsets to customers this January.

The International Game Developers Association has issued a statement opposing King’s recent Candy Crush Saga trademark filing — in which the game developer claimed ownership of the words “candy” and “saga” across all gaming platforms.

Calling the move “predatory,” the group plans to use its Business and Legal Special Interest Group to investigate the filing, which was recently approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc. shares received a nice boost on Tuesday, on the back of reports that Apple will use the company’s sapphire glass for its next generation iPhone cover.

GT shares posted a new 52-week high of $12.72, while analysts at Canaccord Genuity also raised their price targets on the company from $13 to $15.

Apple maintains its position as the world’s most valuable brand for the third year in a row, according to this year’s Brand Finance Global 500 study.

After Apple, the other positions in the Top 10 were filled out by Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, General Electric, AT&T, Amazon, Walmart, and IBM.

“What sets [Apple] apart is its ability to monetize [its] brand,” Brand Finance CEO David Haigh said in a statement. “For example, though tablets were in use before the iPad, it was the application of the Apple brand to the concept that captured the public imagination and allowed it to take off as a commercial reality.”

When Google Translate received its post iOS 7 update last September it was missing one important feature: the iOS 7 keyboard.

That has been amended in the free translation app’s latest update, which builds on the streamlined and modern look and feel of the previous update, but also adds an iOS 7-optimized keyboard and status bar.

BiteSMS, the best jailbreak tweak for SMS addicts, has just been updated to version 8.0, coming out of beta officially and gaining iOS 7 and iPhone 5s support.

A lot of the artistic assets of Flappy Bird were ripped pretty much wholesale from Super Mario Bros.. So what happens when you beat Flappy Bird? Do you face Bowser? As this parody video show, it’s not the King of the Koopas you have to fear: it’s gaming’s favorite stereotypical Italian plumber, who certainly won’t let you flap your way past pipe 999.

Do you love playing Minecraft on your iPhone or iPad? So do we, but you’ve got to admit, there’s some compromises in playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition compared to the Mac, not least of which the size of the worlds. On the Mac, Minecraft worlds are infinite, but on iOS, they are extremely limited. But according to a new blog post, that’s about to change soon.

Apple won’t come right out and say so, but the iPhone 5c is a (comparative) dud. But why? Legendarly Apple ad man Ken Segall has his theories, and it all comes down to the fact that with the iPhone 5c, Apple violated Steve Jobs’ prime directive: Apple doesn’t do cheap.

Do you think Blackberry is dead? So does T-Mobile, which is why they tried to get Blackberry customers on the network to switch over to Apple’s smartphone. But apparently, Blackberry has some life in it yet… or enough, at least, to get pissed off about T-Mobile counting the Canadian smartphone maker out.

Love Clear, the slick iPhone to-do app? So do we. But if you’ve never tried Clear before — or if you bought Clear+ and want the minus version without paying for it — you’ll soon be able to download it, free of charge.

Remember GBA4iOS? It was a Gameboy Advance emulator for iOS that took advantage of an App Store enterprise deployment loophole to let you play GBA games on your iPhone or iPad, no jailbreak required. Unfortunately, Apple closed the loophole… until now.

It’s time to return to the bizarre and unpredictable planet of Pandora with Borderlands 2…and Cult of Mac Deals will you help you do so without putting a dent in your wallet.

A true role playing first person shooter, you can embark on campaigns solo, or invite three friends to join you in the mayhem that is sure to ensue. This game is just pure, unadulterated, shoot-em-up fun that’s wrapped in an absurd, colorful, and interactive package. Add to that four-player online and co-op goodness, and you have an addictive game everyone can love. And all for just $9.99!

Apple took a step away from Google when it launched iOS 7, choosing instead to have Siri search results come from Bing, the Microsoft search service.

When you ask Siri to search for a topic, she’ll just use Bing, and place the results on the Siri screen. This is fine, if you like Bing.

If you want to search, say, Google or Wikipedia, you’ll need to specify.

Olloclip’s 3-In–1 Macro lens is extremely limited, but that’s by design: It’s a set of close-up lenses for the iPhone 5/S and fifth-gen iPod Touch (using the included adapter) which let you magnify the tiny world around us and put these wonders where God intended: on Instagram.