The Independent Games Festival (IGF), held every spring at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, is a celebration of the independent spirit. It’s both a gauge of the cutting edge in game design as well as an increasingly popular event among gamers of all stripe.

This year, the list of nominees for the awards contains a veritable boat-load of games that are available on iOS or Mac. It’s a who’s-who of the hot new games tat everyone’s talking about as well as a notice that mobile gaming is definitely on the map.

LAS VEGAS — Mophie’s Juice Packs are widely considered to be the best battery cases you can get for the iPhone. They attach via Lightning and give you a backup power reserve for long days when a normal charger isn’t available.

Today at CES, Mophie unveiled its new lineup for battery cases for the iPhone. The Space Pack not only doubles battery life, but it has a pretty cool trick up its sleeve: additional storage.

Apple seeded the third beta of iOS 7.1 to developers today as a direct download and OTA update. The release comes after beta 2 was seeded in the Apple Dev Center on December 13.

Apple hasn’t said what new features are in beta 3, but rest assured that we’ll let you know. New betas for the Apple TV and Xcode were also released alongside 7.1 beta 3 today. The public release of iOS 7.1 hasn’t been revealed, but this new beta is a sign that the software is getting closer to prime time.

MyTeeth — Education — Free ($1.99 unlock)

It’s important for people to learn proper tooth-brushing techniques, and not just because toothpaste and floss are way cheaper than root canals and fillings. Brushing is just an important part of fitting in with society because society is full of people who will notice if you have broccoli stuck in your teeth or if your breath smells like the inside of a garbage disposal.

MyTeeth is here to help with a selection of slightly creepy-looking children who will brush along with your kids — or you — to ensure that your chompers get nice and clean. Just don’t stare into their beady little eyes too long. I think I saw Cthulhu in there.

MyTeeth

Just after we waxed rhapsodic about the new SteelSeries Stratus iOS 7 gaming controller comes a new controller to the news cycle, the Signal RP One.

If the picture above is any indication, this one is sized more like a typical console controller in the Xbox style than SteelSeries’ mini stature, which could bode well for Signal, as not everyone has the tiny hands to deal with a smaller controller device.

As a designer, you can never have enough icons. Period.

The iOS 7 App Developer Icon Pack is a collection of vector icons and symbols optimized for iOS 7 app development. Engineered for the tab bar and toolbar in iPhone and iPad, they’re always pixel perfect and ready for Retina displays. During this limited time offer, Cult of Mac Deals has it for 48% off the regular price…only $39.

LAS VEGAS – It seems like every company is busting out a tiny sensor that keeps track of your steps and other fitness goals here at CES, but if you’re slouching over a computer for 8 hours a day, correcting your posture can go a long way toward improving your fitness. Lumo is putting a different spin on the pedometer by focusing not just on how much you’re moving, but on whether you’re keeping your head up and shoulders straight too.

LAS VEGAS — For years now, Olloclip has been making stellar lenses that slip over the iPhone’s camera lens and enhance iPhoneography with the ability to take fisheye, telephoto and macro photos. But there has apparently been a struggle within Olloclip about whether or not to offer an iPad lens. Now the struggle is over, and iPad-loving photographers have won: The first Olloclip lens for iPad will be available soon.

Chong Pak, the company’s design director, told us there were only a few hurdles to clear before Olloclip went iPad — but those hurdles were tall.

LAS VEGAS — Shure has hit the extremes lately in terms of how much they think music lovers are willing to pay for headphones and earphones, but their latest in-ear monitors cost just $50.

The new SE112s are just half the price of Shure’s previously cheapest IEMs, the SE215, and only $20 more than Apple’s iconic, earbud-ish EarPods. It’s quite a change for Shure: Earlier this year, the company came out with the ultra-high-end, $1,000-plus SE846 canalphones. And their exotic, carbon-fiber SRH1540 headphones arrived just a few months ago at a robust $624.

Apple has today announced that App Store sales topped a whopping $10 billion in 2013, with over $1 billion made during December alone. Almost three billion apps were downloaded during the final month of the year, making it the most successful month in App Store history.

When you create a new email message in OS X Maverick’s Mail app, you can choose–assuming you have more than one email account in there–which account you’re sending the email from. For example, you might want to send an email from your work account rather than your personal one if it’s work related, and vice versa if it’s about a party you’ve recently attended.

The problem is, when you choose from the drop-down menu in the mail composition window, the account you want to send from may not be in the top spot. It might be a couple of slots down the list. If you want to rearrange the order of these accounts, you can search in the Mail preferences until the cows come home because the ability to do so just isn’t in there.

It is, however, possible to do.

We all know that the iPhone 6 will be thinner than the current model — Apple hasn’t released a major iteration of a product yet without making it at least a tiny bit svelter — but will it also be physically bigger? That’s the million dollar question, and a new rumor says ‘yes’, and that Apple may release a physically bigger iPhone as early as May.

The iPhone 5c is not a cheap phone. In fact, it costs $549 without a contract. Apple has 0% share of the sub-$400 “budget” smartphone market by sole dint of the fact it doesn’t sell a budget iPhone.

But hey, don’t let that get in the way of Microsoft trying to claim they are outselling the iPhone in the under-$400 market, which is sort of like saying that Louis Vuitton is outselling Apple in designer clothes.

Something that often gets missed about wearable technology is that — while the tech part is all well and good — in order for it to appeal to the average consumer it needs to look like something you’d actually be happy to be seen wearing.

In this capacity, Martian Watches’ newly-announced semi-smartwatch the Martian Notifier excels.

If there’s one thing the fine citizens of the United States love in their cars it’s cup holders. God knows why a car needs like 20 places to stow a bucket of coffee or soda, but it does. Which means, ironically, that the average U.S car has an average of 16[1] cup holders empty at any one time.

Thankfully, the SpeeCup is here to fill up at least one of them, although given the amount of free cup-holder space available, it seems almost silly to combine a speaker, a Siri-enabled mic and a cup-shaped vessel into just one single gadget.

We called it a “badass” product when MakerBot announced their Replicator 2X at last year’s CES, and now the company is back with three new 3D printers — including the Replicator Mini, which is being pitched as an affordable desktop unit for beginners.

“This is fifth-generation technology that’s setting the standard for reliability, quality, and connectivity,” MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis said of the new Replicator printer. “It’s our fastest and easiest 3D printer to use.”

Apple has too many white men in its upper ranks, say shareholders who are pressuring the company to add more female and minority directors to its board.

In response, Apple has added new language to its board charter claiming that it will consider more candidates who meet this criteria — noting that, “The nominating committee is committed to actively seeking out highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool from which board nominees are chosen.”

According to research group Gartner, more than one billion Android-powered devices will be sold in 2014.

The consultancy claims that some version of the Android OS will be found on 1.1 billion tablets, smartphones, watches and other gadgets purchased this year — an increase of 26 percent compared with 2013.

Canon’s new PowerShot N100 is also called the Story Camera. Why? Because it reads to you as you fall asleep at night? Because it puts speech bubbles in the mouths of your portrait subjects? Nope. It’s because it has a second camera on the back that snaps a photo of the photographer as they snap a picture of, well, anything.

MeteoEarth is a pretty rad weather app for the iPad. It’s purpose isn’t really to tell you whether to take an umbrella with your to the shops, but it can do that if you like. No, what MeteoEarth is really good at is showing you beautifully-animated views of the weather as it blows and scuds across the surface of the Earth. And now you can get it for the Mac.

We wrote yesterday that CES 2014 is all about the wearables, and Razer is yet another company jumping on the bandwagon: choosing CES as the location at which to announce its new (and unexpected) class of Nabu smartbands.

While smartbands are absolutely everywhere these days, Razer hopes that the Nabu — designed to work with Bluetooth 4.0 devices — can set itself apart thanks to its open software platform and unique features. Think smartwatch meets fitness tracker.

Nikon has chosen the media shoutfest that is CES to announce the D3300 SLR, an update to the – that’s right – D3200. It comes with a new sensor, a faster processor, a different crappy kit lens and this year’s favorite new gimmick: no optical low-pass filter.

LAS VEGAS  – Remembering passwords seems to have become one of great challenge in computing for simpletons like me. Solutions like 1Password and iCloud Keychain have tried to solve humans’ forgetfulness, but EyeLock revealed a new product today that not only stores all your passwords, it keeps them locked away with your own personal iris scanner.

CES is all about the groundbreaking, cutting edge technology, which is why ION chose the event to debut their, err, Cassette Adapter Bluetooth technology.

Enabling your car’s cassette player to become its own wireless Bluetooth receiver, the Cassette Adapter Bluetooth lets you stream music from your iPhone or other Bluetooth device without the need for cables or complicated installation. “Just pop it in and it automatically turns on,” reads the company’s press release.

The FAVI pico+ projector is just another little battery-powered “beamer,” a DLP projector that can be kept in a pocket and used to throw photos and video from your iPhone or iPad up onto the wall. But this one has a neat extra – the built-in Wi-Fi radio ands AirPlay support, so the only cable you’ll need is the charger to keep the thing going.