Everyone loves mini golf, but how do you make mini golf even better? By adding robots, of course. And by having it take place in outer space.
Helping Orbit the Robot and his ladyfriend Tess find their way home, Astro Golf players must participate in a variety of space-themed mini golf challenges — involving dodging black holes and avoiding a plethora of spaceship-related impediments.
During an Ubuntu Town Hall Hangout on Wednesday, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth made some interesting comments regarding Apple’s sapphire displays.
“Apple just snapped up three year’s worth of the supply of sapphire screens from the company that we had engaged to make the screens for the [Ubuntu] Edge [smartphone],” he said.
For those unfamiliar with it, the Ubuntu Edge was a proposed “high concept” smartphone announced by Canonical on 22 July 2013. Canonical was seeking to crowdfund a production run of 40,000 units through Indiegogo, but the project was scrapped when fundraising was able to only raise $12,809,906 out of the $32 million goal needed to kickstart the project.
Interactive map app WunderMap has received a new update, adding universal support (the app was previously designed for iPad only), as well as other neat touches.
These include a full-screen map view, accessible by swiping upwards on the top bar; a completely redesigned display for current conditions, forecasts, and alerts; a simplified interface which combines layer groups and layers to better control what you want to see on your WunderMap; and the ability to “share your weather with your mom” via webcam.
In addition, WunderMap has received a new app icon, and vastly improved performance and memory usage.
Here’s a slightly obscure tip that’s worth sharing becasue it could literally save you from a lost photo library. If you use Lightroom, Adobe has a “secret” script you can download that extracts the JPG images from your previews. Why would you want to do this? Say you lose the hard drive with all your original RAW photos on it, or you just get drunk one night and wake up in the morning to find you deleted your Lightroom folder.
This script will rescue you.
The TopoCharger is an odd little device, but it could be useful for some. It’s an iPhone GPS case. What? Yes. A GPS-less GPS that comes with on-board storage for maps, and a big fat battery pack so you can use your iPhone in GPS mode without killing its own battery dead. If you’re wondering why you’d bother with this instead of just using a regular battery case, then keep wondering, because I have no idea. Yet. Let’s check it out.
We might be no closer to getting classic Nintendo games on iOS, but independent developer Riley Testut yesterday released the long-awaited 2.0 update to his slick Game Boy emulator, GBA4iOS.
Supporting Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, and original Game Boy games, GBA4iOS is the most straightforward and best-looking way to bring nostalgic Nintendo action to iOS 7 — and you don’t even need to jailbreak your iOS device to use it.
All that is required is to open up Testut’s dedicated GBA4iOS website — which greets users with the Apple-esque message, “Game Boy Advance, meet iOS. Again.” From there, simply tap “download” and you’ll be tracking wild Pokemon, or leaping on mushrooms with Mario, in no time.
Mural.ly is a mood-board app, or white-board app, or cork-board app, or whatever you want to call it, and it works in the browser and as an iOS app. I’ve been testing it out (briefly) and so far it’s pretty great. It even lets you access your Evernote notes and drop them into a “mural.”
Flickr’s 1TB storage “limit” is great and all, but getting even 1/100th of that up to Flickr in the form of photos is still tricky. The iOS Flickr app takes care of new pictures on your iPhone, and now a new app called Uppr, from friend of Cult of Mac Robert Miles (not, not that Robert Miles). And boy is it slick.
Text selection on iOS is still a pain in the ass. Some apps fix it up with extra buttons above the virtual keyboard, but Thoughts 2, an iPhone notes app, adds extra buttons to the text selection itself. This makes it easy to expand and contract the selection one character at a time which – given the fickle nature of text fields in iOS – should help a lot.
Most endless running games are the definition of pick-and-up-play affairs: sometimes with more depth than you’d expect, but also games that will immediately graspable by the most casual of audiences.
An endless runner in an airplane (an endless flyer?) Any Landing is a bit different. Taking its name from the old saying about any landing you can walk away from being a good one, Any Landing will most appeal to a more hardcore game audience — the kind of people who will invest a few hours in mastering control mechanics.
Satechi’s new F1 Smart Monitor Stand really is smart, apart from the name which almost had me tossing it into the email trash because I thought it was a car-themed novelty accessory.
In reality, it’s a little stand for your iMac or your Cinema Display, only it comes with a built-in USB hub with headphone and microphone ports. WHY HAS NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?
What’s that, you say? You’ve been longing for a retro, old school, three dimensional dungeon crawler to take with you on your iPhone and iPad?
Look no further than Coldfire Keep, a brand new first person dungeon crawler from Steve Jarman and Crescent Moon Games. You’ll have to make your way through this beautifully rendered 3D dungeon, full of monsters, puzzles, hidden secrets and–natch–tons of loot.
It should be in the App Store tonight (February 19) by 11 pm Eastern time here in the US, if all goes according to plan, and it’s looking pretty sweet, if the video below is to be trusted.
Tesla’s stock soared earlier this week when rumors surfaced that Apple and Tesla executives had talks about the iPhone giant acquiring the electric car maker.
Apple considered making an iCar before inventing the iPhone, and they’ve lost prized engineers to the automaker, but it’s unclear how a merger would benefit the two companies, especially Tesla.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Elon Musk, CEO and co-founder of Telsa, confirmed the two companies have been talking about something, but fanboys shouldn’t get their hopes up on a merger happening:
This afternoon Sundar Pichai revealed the dates for Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, where developers across the globe descend on San Francisco to learn what’s next.
The 7th annual Google I/O will be held on June 25-26, but if you want to get in you’ll have to win a lottery.
If you can’t beat ’em, buy em.
That’s been Facebook’s strategy lately when it comes to third-party challengers and this afternoon the company announced its making its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up popular messaging app WhatsApp for a cool $12 billion in stock.
Facebook is also tossing in $4 billion in cash as well as $3 billion in restricted stock units bringing the total price tag to an incredible $19 billion.
Apple has been a long time supporter of Project RED by selling special edition products that help the charity, but now you can help fight AIDS just by swiping credit cards on your iPhone.
Project RED announced today that it teamed up with Square to launch the new SQUA(RED) Reader. The red credit card reader costs $10, 97.25% of which goes straight to the Global Fund to fight AIDS.
For all but the absolute purists, our iPhones have taken over as the camera of choice. We’ve dedicated an upcoming issue of our weekly mag to taking even better photographs with our iPhones.
Here’s where you come in: Send us your best pics on the theme of “Silver.” Yeah, that can be anything from a close-up on your Space Gray iPad (kind of recursive, but why not?) to glittering ice on the sidewalk. Make sure you take the picture with an iPhone – any model will do.
Update: We’re actually offering a whole ton of stuff for winners of our contest, with Olloclip willing to send along the following prizes for our first, second and third place winners:
You’ll also get to see the top photo and the runner ups showcased in an upcoming Cult of Mac Magazine Newsstand issue.
To enter, just take the most creative iPhone photo that matches the topic “Silver” that you can think of — and you can also submit pics you’ve snapped that fit the theme. Then upload your photo to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag – #CoMSilver.
The contest ends on Thursday, February 20 at 8 a.m. PT, but there’s no limit to how many times you can enter, so get snapping, you amazing creative types.
Image: Derek Gavey
I’ve long been a fan of minimalist protection for my personal iPads, using a green Smart Cover for the non-retina iPad mini I still favor as my main reading and web surfing device.
When I got the Toffee case in the mail, however, I might have detected a bit of jealousy from the Smart Cover, which has gotten rather grimy and well-used over the past several months as I move the iPad mini from bag to bag, house to car seat, bag to coffee house table, and such.
The Macleay Folio comes in a very classy box, all recycled cardboard and slide out inner pieces. The folio itself peeks out through the clear front of the packaging with a classy style that promises a higher-class iPad mini experience. It’s ostensibly marketed for the iPad mini with Retina display, but as both models of iPad mini are essentially the same, the Folio will work with either.
I took some time with the Folio to figure out if the classiness was worth hiding my mini inside of.
Tales from the Borderlands developers Telltale Games and Gearbox Software will reveal the first details about their forthcoming game during a panel at the SXSW Gaming Expo, Telltale revealed today.
The award-winning studios will describe how they first came to work together on the eagerly-anticipated project, how the game might unfold, and (hopefully) plenty of other juicy details.
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.
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: