IK Multimedia is responsible for a veritable boat-load of music peripherals and apps, like the hard-rocking guitar crunch of effects app Amplitube and the portable MIDI keyboard iRig Keys. If you’re a musician interested in working with iOS devices on stage, IK Multimedia is the place to go.

It was with excitement, then, that I opened the latest review gadget from the musical company, the iRig BlueBoard, a small footprint Bluetooth-enabled pedal board meant to help you switch effects in a guitar app like Amplitube or piano sounds in something like iLectric Piano, both IK Multimedia apps.

The BlueBoard is a great idea, especially if you’re working with a guitar or keyboard hooked up to an iPad or iPhone. Being able to switch settings on the fly with a foot-operated switch is something I do all the time with my analog guitar foot pedals. Having it do so via Bluetooth is even better, as it won’t take up the 30-pin or Lightning connector, leaving that free to connect a guitar or MIDI interface, like the iRig HD guitar adapter or the iRig Keys.

Unfortunately, that’s where the great idea stops and the difficult to figure out begins.

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 a quick slide-show creator, an app that will help you snag some wheels, and more data than you require.

Here you go:

Presentics — Productivity — Free ($9.99 unlock)

If you have a presentation to prepare at the last minute or you think PowerPoint is too clunky, you might want to look at Presentics. It’s an iPad app that will help you make a minimalist slide show quickly and easily. It just takes a few taps and some typing, and you’ll have a quick, clean project. You can also embed images, audio, and video right inside the app if you want to go all multimedia on it.

You have access to everything in the free version, but the $9.99 unlock lets you save more than two projects and share over the cloud.

Presentics

Cold Tires — Utilities — Free

If you prefer to add air to your favorite vehicle’s radials in the comfort of your own garage, you might be interested in Cold Tires. It’s a quick and simple calculator that will automatically compensate for the temperature difference between where you put the air in and where you’ll actually be driving. Meaning outside. Where it’s probably freezing. Because winter.

Just add a few bits of data, and the app will tell you how much extra air to add to make sure the pressure stays where you want it.

Cold Tires

Puzzle Sidekick — Reference — Free

Puzzle Sidekick is an ambitious app that hopes to serve as a reference guide for people who do crosswords, augmented-reality games, puzzle-driven scavenger hunts, and whichever other situations one might need a working knowledge of semaphore.

It also contains guides to codemaking (and breaking), information on our solar system, and a couple dozen other random topics that I can’t even remember right now. So even if you’re not following a puzzle trail anytime soon, it’s still an interesting collection of random information that’s worth a look.

Puzzle Sidekick

Legítimo — Productivity — Free

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to get something in writing, like if you and your roommate agree to split utilities in exchange for the right to have pizza and wear Hawaiian shirts on Fridays. Crucial dealings like those are the sorts of things you bring ink and paper in on. But what if you don’t know how to speak Official-Sounding Legal Document?

Legítimo is here to help. You can use it to draw up loan agreements, leases, sales and purchases, and service contracts and even sign them in the app. And everyone gets a copy via e-mail or text.

Also, help me figure out which category that utilities/Pizza Day deal falls under. No reason.

Legítimo

Bykes — Travel — Free

Bike-sharing programs are popping up all over the world now, and here’s an app to help you navigate some of them. Bykes will help you find stations for 11 bike fleets in five countries (more to come). In addition to just showing you where the depots are, it will also tell you how many bikes are there and how many stalls are available for those looking to return their borrowed wheels.

So if you live in — or are visiting — Dublin, London, Brisbane, Melbourne, Boulder, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, the District of Columbia, Montreal, or Toronto, you’re all set. If not, just wait or drive, I guess.

Bykes

The Los Angeles Board of Education has voted to continue its efforts to provide every student and teacher in the L.A. Unified school district with a computer by approving a new $115-million proposal to distribute iPads to 38 more campuses. The proposal also calls for the purchase of laptops for every student at seven high schools, and picks up a couple thousand extra iPads for new state tests in spring.

Overall the board thinks it will buy somewhere around 67,500 new tablets just for the spring testing, even though an oversight committee recommend only purchasing 38,500. The board decided getting everyone the same model at the same time is of the utmost importance for revolutionizing education, even though the $1-billion effort is expected to exhaust all their tech funds made available by voter-approved school-construction bonds.

Bykes — Travel — Free

Bike-sharing programs are popping up all over the world now, and here’s an app to help you navigate some of them. Bykes will help you find stations for 11 bike fleets in five countries (more to come). In addition to just showing you where the depots are, it will also tell you how many bikes are there and how many stalls are available for those looking to return their borrowed wheels.

So if you live in — or are visiting — Dublin, London, Brisbane, Melbourne, Boulder, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, the District of Columbia, Montreal, or Toronto, you’re all set. If not, just wait or drive, I guess.

Bykes

Fans of word games are always looking out for new apps that will let them arrange letters and clear blocks or cross things or whatever else people do when they’re using text as game pieces. Here’s another game that lets you do that.

It’s called Alpha 9, and it’s basically Boggle plus Tetris. Your goal is to form words of at least three letters in order to clear lines from a board to keep the letter blocks dropping from the ceiling from piling up to the top of the screen.

That’s Wall Mode, anyway. It has another game type, but they’re both pretty average.

After negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission for months regarding the use of in-app purchases in the App Store, Apple has reached a consent agreement with the agency, according to a company-wide email Tim Cook just sent employees.

Apple’s in-app purchases practices have frustrated regulators since debuting in the App Store back in 2009. In his letter to employees, which was obtained by Re/code, Cook says a host of complaints from customers led Apple to investigate its practices. Last year Apple emailed 28 million App Store customers regarding their in-app purchases and subsequently refunded more than 37,000 in-app purchases that parents claim were unauthorized. The FTC announced that Apple will refund $32.5 million to customers as part of the settlement.

The settlement also requires Apple to change its billing practices by March 31 to ensure customers give their informed consent before billing them for in-app purchases. Apple also has to add an option for customers to remove that consent at any time.

Cook says “it doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled. To us, it smacked of double jeopardy,” but the FTC’s deal isn’t going to require Apple to do anything extra, so they decided to sign it and move on.

Here’s the full letter:

The Earjax® Echo is a Bluetooth speaker that truly embodies simplicity and functionality. About the size of an 8oz can of soda, you can pair it with your phone, tablet, or MP3 player and take music with you wherever you go.

And now you can get the Earjax Echo for 50% off thanks to Cult of Mac Deals…just $39.95!

I can think of one reason, and one reason only, to take my iPhone into the shower, and that reason is YouPorn. But maybe you’re waiting for a call from the delivery man or a visit from the plumber, and you’re all sweaty and dirty and you need to strip off all your clothes and get in the shower right now. In that case, you need the cool new HoYo, an easy-to-access waterproof cellphone pocket for the shower.

Having your phone calls listened to and your text messages read remotely is a genuine concern for many smartphone owners now that we’ve gotten an insight into the activities of the NSA spies. We’ve quickly learned that our seemingly secure devices are like an open book for those who have the knowledge and the power to get into them.

But the Blackphone, an Android-powered smartphone from Silent Circle and Geeksphone, is designed to ensure that your private data remains private, and cannot be obtained by even the snoopiest of snoopers. 

If you want to be sure your data is secure on your Mac, Apple has provided an easy way to do so. They’ve created File Vault, accessed via the System Preferences, to encrypt your startup drive with some heavy duty file security.

You’ll need OS X Lion or later, and you’ll have to have an OS X Recovery partition on your drive. This last bit is typically installed on newer Macs, anyway, but to test it out, reboot your Mac and hold the Command-R key down. If you see an OS X Recovery screen, you’re good to go.

Setting up FileVault is even easier than that. Just launch System Preferences and click on Security & Privacy to get started.

The iOS gaming experience is about to get a whole lot more interactive, thanks to Israeli startup Umoove.

With its new app Umoove Experience, downloadable free of charge from the App Store, gamers can have a go at piloting a 3D avatar flying over a village — enabling them to control navigation entirely by face and head gestures.

While few of us would say its design belongs inside of one, one of the most common jokes about the new Mac Pro’s stealth engine looks is to say it looks exactly like a trash can.

That got one German thinking. If the Mac Pro looks so much like a trash can, why not build a Hackintosh out of a trash can. Which is exactly what he did, crafting his Mac Pro out of an Authentics Lunar bathroom trash can that comes with matching toilet brush. And while the replica isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the real thing, it certainly looks the part. Check out more images below.

The iPhone 5c isn’t a failure by any means, but even so, it’s not selling as well as most people would have expected, with sales of the iPhone 5s believed to outpace its plastic midrange sibling by as much as three to one. And while it’s true that the iPhone 5c is still selling well enough to make it the second- or third-best-selling smartphone at every carrier, it’s still a middling success compared to the iPhone 5s.

Yet maybe that’s what Apple wants. In fact, maybe Apple realized that by selling the previous year’s phone for $100 less, they were cutting into their own margins by selling what was, in design, a luxury phone at a mid-tier cost. If so, the iPhone 5c is working exactly as designed.

Facebook’s always looking for the next thing, and the service it has its eye on now is mobile news reading and curation. The social network has the likes of Flipboard and Zite in its sights with a new app called Paper.

Ozzy Osbourne has admitted to being influenced by The Beatles growing up — so is it any surprise that his band, Black Sabbath, would follow the Fab Four when it comes to dealing with iTunes?

Tech research firm DisplaySearch has published its forecast predictions for 2014 — and among them is the suggest that the next generation iPhone will feature a dramatically larger display.

Are you the kind of person that likes all of their tech to match up, or else someone that just really loves the iOS lock screen? Either way, you may wish to download a new OS X screensaver, which provides the iOS 7 lock screen experience for Mac users.

A group of 64,000 Silicon Valley workers have won the right to pursue a lawsuit against a number of tech companies — including Apple — accused of an “overarching conspiracy” to keep employee pay low through anti-poaching agreements.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh that will let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what defendants claim could be more than $9 billion of damages.

Wow, this is a surprise. StoryBuilder is a new browser-based web app from… Amazon. It’s a pretty great corkboard app for screenwriters to plan their screenplays, and because it’s browser based you can use it anywhere, on your Mac, iPad or iPhone.

I love wireless gadgets, but sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth. For instance, I’m forever getting dropped connections on my AirPlay speakers, making them more annoying to use than wired speakers, despite the promised convenience. And wireless earbuds seem like an exercise in frustration. I regularly lose even my white Apple EarPods, so imagine how bad it’d be with two separate (and tiny) buds.

Jabra’s new Rox wireless earbuds at least address the last question. How? By adding a wire.

I’m a great example of why backup iPhone batteries don’t really work. I have a stack of the things in all shapes and sizes, and yet where are they when I need them? At home in a gray felt cat house (don’t ask). I just never remember to take the things with me.

Photojojo’s new Power Boost Keychain aims to change that, putting a smallish battery pack and charing cable on a keychain. Now you’ll never leave the thing at home. Or if you do, you’ll be locked out, and you won’t be able to call a locksmith.

According to Tim Cook there is good reason to feel excited about the possibilities offered by Apple’s deal with China Mobile.

Cook — who is currently in Beijing ahead of the iPhone going on sale on the China Mobile network this Friday — said he is “incredibly optimistic” about Apple’s partnership with the world’s largest mobile carrier.

MakeDoc looks like a good bet for otherwise right-thinking folks who find them selves required to supply a Word DOCX file. Being a smart nerd, you undoubtedly write in Markdown, converting to the required format on output. But DOCX isn;t an output option for most iOS text editors. That’s where makeDoc comes in.

Horizon is a great new iPhone app that shoots horizontal video however you hold your phone. It uses the gyroscope and accelerometers inside the iPhone to work out just how you’re holding it, and grabs a proper, level landscape-format shot for you.

Check out the video demo:

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