Cult of Mac

IPhoto 2.0 for iOS has two amazing new features that no other photo editing has, nor will have for the foreseeable future: It can write its edits directly back to the iOS Camera Roll, and it can delete photos from the Camera Roll. This pretty much means you can now do all your photo organizing right from the app.

Federico Viticci, the sleepy-eyed sexpot founder of Mac Stories, made this discovery by the unusual means of actually reading the release notes of the app. And thank God he did, because it makes iPhoto around a zillion times more useful.

I wonder just what effect the new iPad Air will have on keyboard covers? The iPads one to four were all big enough that you could pretty much squeeze a full-sized keyboard into a matching cover, but all the keyboard cases I have so far tried for the iPad mini have been unusable, like a netbook keyboard.

Belkin’s new keyboards for the iPad Air hope that physics will continue to favor the former situation.

Chromic is both an video-grading app for the iPhone and a demonstration that we are all living in the future, carrying powerful supercomputers in our pockets. How else do you explain the fact that you can instantly apply any of Chromic’s filters to your video in real time as you watch it? You can even – and this is totally rad – scrub through the video and the effects are still applied as if a coat of paint had already dried on your pixels.

As long as Miniot keeps making its lovely wooden iPad cases, we’ll keep writing about them. The latest is this rather fetching little number for the iPad, arriving just in time to cover the front of your hot new Retina model with slivers of dead trees.

Mavericks’ new in-Finder tagging is great, letting you treat your files like you treat your Gmails and effectively keeping the same file in multiple “folders” at once. But actually tagging the files is still kind of a pain. Happily, Brett Terpstra is here to help with a rather simple tip.

CloudConvert, you will remember, is a web service that lets you convert any document from you Dropbox into pretty much any other file type that makes sense. Now, it has added support for iWork documents, letting you convert Pages documents to Word DOC and DOCX for example.

The killer for some, though, is that you can roll back your newly screwed-up iWork files to work with iWork ’09.

Boasting a powerful set of tools used by professional photographers, illustrators, designers, and hobbyists, cf/x alpha is the gold standard for image composition and design. If you’re looking for a better way to create multi-image compositions, this is your answer.

And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $49 during this limited time offer.

Apple’s product announcements used to be the most exciting events in technology. Nowadays they’re boring, awkward and cringeworthy.

What happened? 

Even a designer at fashion house Christian Dior can’t get her hands on a gold iPhone.

Camille Miceli, Dior’s artistic director of accessories, loves her iPhone. According to a Q&A with the Wall Street Journal, she spends every morning reading daily “Le Monde” on it in bed. (Oh la la!)

Though we harbored doubts before the debut that it was the epitome of tacky, Apple’s golden iPhone 5S mines current fashion trends – the color has been glimmering more on store shelves by a whopping 88 percent.

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and if your (or a client’s) online storefront needs to be ready for seasonal discounting, we’ve put together The Complete Web Designers’ Fall Bundle from Vandelay Premier to ease your workload.

The bundle includes all of the vital elements that you need to get your new sites looking holiday fresh. And all for 85% off – just $29.99 – thanks to Cult of Mac Deals!

The big iPad event might be over, but take heart fellow Apple fans, there are still plenty of great Apple stories to chat about on our all-new CultCast. This episode: the iPhone stops giving motion sickness to the pukers; some of your favorite Apple apps get big redesigns; the new Macbook Pro gets benchmarked; Apple puts your passwords in the iCloud; and more!

Join us for our second CultCast this week! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let baseline roll. And don’t miss episode 96 for our MEGAsode coverage on all that was announced at Apple’s big Oct. 22nd event.

This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine is all about apps that push boundaries – enabling us to share, connect and get stuff done.

Think back: When was the last time you hitchhiked? Crashed on the couch of a stranger? Did you get your last job on the street corner? Or meet that special someone there?

You’ve probably used your iPhone recently to couch surf, catch a ride downtown, find a date or maybe even source a freebie for dinner.

We talk to experts to understand why we feel comfortable doing things with our iPhones that were traditionally “Stranger, Danger” territory and our intrepid reporters find out what happens when you catch a ride, look for work, open up your house and try to get rid of Cheetos snack packs to perfect strangers.

There’s a crazy gallery of apps that pushed Apple’s boundaries too far — remember Baby Shaker? — and an update on why you can still find your dictator of choice in the iTunes store.

Our exclusive Ask An Apple Genius column weighs in  why Mavericks scrolling seem so sluggish and why the geniuses sometimes don’t seem as smart as you are.

Check us out on iTunes.

We aim to please – and read all of your comments and questions – so keep ’em coming!

As part of their upcoming charity auction for Project Red, Jony Ive and Marc Newson announced that they’ve created a one of a kind, red Mac Pro as part of their auction for Bono’s Project (RED).

The red Mac Pro is estimated to sell for $45,000-$60,000 dollars and will be included in a lot of items to be auctioned off at Southeby’s on Nov. 23rd to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Jony and Marc collaborated on curating a list of items for the auction, as well as co-designing many products themselves, such as a custom Leica M, gold EarPods, and this aluminum desk.

A listing of the items in the auction block can be viewed on Sotheby’s site. Here are some more pics of the red Mac Pro:

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

It may be a cliche, but if the Internet has proven great at one thing, it’s connecting people. It’s allowed a million communities to bloom, big and small.

These days, the iPhone is having a similar bonding effect, but offline.

We trust our iPhones to reach out to people – sure, mainly friends and family – but also to contact complete strangers in the quest for a ride, a love match or a new job.

One effect is that we’re all becoming micro-entrepreneurs, according to Rachel Botsman, author of 2010’s “What’s Mine is Yours: The rise of Collaborative Consumption.” Peer-to-peer rentals alone are an estimated $26 billion market sector, she writes.

And it’s not just a bad economy that leads us to share our car, our leftovers or get a loan outside traditional channels, Botsman notes. That may have given it momentum, but increasingly it was the iPhone itself.

“People today are starved for community,” says Anthony Centore, a licensed counselor and founder of Thriveworks. “We’ll take some risks to connect.”

And that connection — tenuous at first — may be that you and I both have iPhones.

“I’d suggest there’s an element of trust there (with iPhones). Of ‘Well, we’re all in the same boat, they’re just like me, let’s help each other out’,” says Adrienne Andrew, a UX researcher for lifelogging app Saga. “I wouldn’t go so far to say that it’s as if we’re all vetted by Apple, but there is an element of self-selection.”

Smartphones may seem ubiquitous, but there are certain demographics that use them more and an even smaller subset that use these apps, adding to a feeling of safety when using them.

“We are more comfortable swapping houses, meeting people, and sharing rides with “strangers” because the same digital technologies that support these smartphone-facilitated encounters discourages anonymity and, with it, antisocial behavior,” says Dana Klisanin, psychologist, founder and CEO of think-tank Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, Inc.

Personal Boundaries And Sliding Doors

There seem to be two basic strategies that people take with sharing their lives with their smartphones: open book or peek-a-boo.

Centore, the counselor, decided long ago that he’s personally for the open book strategy. “Everything online is going to be who I am – everything I present needs to be public,” he says, though he has tweaked some privacy settings on Facebook but isn’t obsessive about who sees what.

His social media roster includes Vine, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp and Google Places. The 33-year-old, Boston-based therapist, who dated online when he was single, hasn’t tried Lyft but had a good holiday experience at a stranger’s beach house found on Airbnb.

Andrew, who holds degrees in computer science and learning design technology from MIT and Stanford, is more for the second strategy. She uses Saga’s lifelogging tool to track her bike commute to work, for example, but keeps her settings public or private depending on where the followers are based.

The app uses your iPhone’s Location Services to log where you are, connecting with apps including RunKeeper, Instagram, FitBit, Facebook, FourSquare and more. There’s a Twitter-like follow-follower model and users can decide who sees what as the stream of locations and activities is logged.

Andrew says she’s noticed her own tendencies as a “control freak” to tweak the default settings and now says she realizes she breaks down followers into three basic groups: “People I know and trust, and I don’t mind if they see most of what I’m doing, then there are people who maybe I know a little bit about them but they’re in the greater Seattle area – but I don’t know well or at all – and I don’t want them to see basically anything and then there are random people in Ireland or Florida, whom I’ll probably never meet and I don’t worry about how they’ll judge me.”

What takes most of the anguish out of sharing and participating in many of these formerly off-bounds activities is the fact that the device itself creates some accountability.

“Participants are trackable via their digital footprint and GPS technologies and in many cases, once an individual has participated in such a swap, etc., community feedback will be available to inform others,” Klisanin says.

“Providing such feedback is a form of digital altruism, an action that takes a little time, but supports individuals and their communities. While it is always important to be cautious, “strangers” who have signed up with “ride-sharing” sites are not the same as the completely anonymous hitchhikers our mother’s warned us about.”

What limits are there to sharing?

But are there limits to what you can do with an app? Some niche ideas – like exchanging breast milk – will get a lot of press but won’t necessarily take off — the target market is probably too small. However, the cost of developing an app to try out an idea is very low.

“As the cost of developing these apps goes down, it’s not that hard to throw your hat in the ring to create something,” Centore says. “Some will be wacky and some will fail, others may only appeal to a very small niche of people.”

Some services, he says, are ripe for disruptive tech. Once more of us can get our heads around the idea. For example, even though many clients use Google to find a therapist, Centore says they prefer face-to-face counseling.

When clients call one of the six Thriveworks centers, they are always offered the online counseling option but most say no. “The conversion rate is minuscule,” he says, adding that the resistance is likely because even though people are comfortable using Skype, if they’re going to therapy they want someone present with them.

“I won’t say there are no limits to what you can do with apps,” Andrew says. But when I ask about the flop of our trial with the Leftover Swap app as the outer limits to smartphone-enabled sharing, she tells me about a mom’s email list in Seattle that she belongs to where people frequently offer swaps of gluten-free flour or diapers in a heavily populated area of the city, often leaving items on their front porches for pick-up.

What’s the difference between swapping seconds on an email list and through an app?

“It’s kind of semi-curated thing and there’s a barrier to getting into it,” she notes. “That barrier is what convinces people that it’s safe. It gets back to ride sharing: finding common ground where you can say, ‘These people are like me,’ seems to be the key.”

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

Seriously, you guys, you have got to try out Device 6, from developer Simogo Games

Yeah, I know it’s $3.99, but dammit, skip the latte this morning and just buy this game. Oh, and watch the video below.

This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple retail store genius. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.  

Answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.

Did the scroll speed change on OS X Mavericks? How can I change it?

Mavericks is designed to make your Mac run faster and more efficiently with better RAM and CPU management. Depending on the hardware and contents on your Mac, these changes may cause scrolling to either speed up or slow down with the upgrade.

The day after Mavericks was released, a customer came to me with this same question. Apple hasn’t officially stated that the scrolling speed has changed and I haven’t noticed it on my own machine, but a quick search revealed a number of people were experiencing either faster or slower scrolling speeds than previously.

There is a simple fix. Go to the System Preferences app >> Accessibility >> Mouse and Trackpad >> Trackpad options or Mouse options, then adjust the speed with the slider there.

Smooth scrolling!

Why is it that every time I go to the Genius Bar I walk away believing that I’m smarter than they are?

Maybe you believe that Apple Geniuses know everything there is to know about every apple product and service and while many of us come pretty close to that standard, for most people this is just not the case. We see a wide variety of issues at the bar and everything is near impossible.

We get a lot of training, but Apple’s product lines are so vast and have been around for so long that it’s impossible for a new hire to pick it all up in just a few short months. If you encounter an issue that your technician is unfamiliar with, there are some basic troubleshooting steps they will perform to isolate and find the cause of your issue so it can be fixed. They may need to reach out to other resources. Be patient: they are working to help you.

Another thing to keep in mind is how much the average customer knows about their product.

I am amazed at the number of people who don’t even know how to backup their device, let alone what a backup is, so we gear our service towards those people. Sometimes we sound dumb when really we are just covering our bases to make sure we don’t get “hung by our lanyards” later for assuming that a customer knows what we’re talking about.

Why do iOS device home buttons fail so easily? Has Touch ID improved its durability?

The home button can become unresponsive for a number of reasons. You may be running low on application memory causing overall unresponsiveness. A reboot will clear the memory, but if it’s still a no-go then a restore might be needed.

Dirt and other debris (like remnants from today’s Cheetos) can also cause home button problems. Try cleaning the button with an alcohol wipe and keep your hands clean while handling your device. Seriously. The home button can take a hefty beating but some do fail. The cable that connects your home button may have failed, which can be replaced by a Genius, though sometimes we have to replace the whole display on newer iPhones to remedy home button issues.

The original home button function on Touch ID devices has improved, but many have reported issues using the sensor. A couple of rules to keep in mind with Touch ID: keep your fingers clean and make sure to scan all parts of your finger that press the button. Touch ID is brand new but Apple is supposedly improving the software for the button as it is used.

A few years ago, developers pushed a lot of boundaries in the iTunes store. Either that, or the minions who OK’d them in a Cupertino basement needed more coffee, better judgement and probably a raise.

As you’ve seen from our gallery of banned apps, the world really doesn’t need to play Baby Shaker with an iPhone. A lot of these apps made a peek-a-boo in the app store and were never more.

But as the virtual store becomes more like a bazaar for its wide range of offerings, you can find just about anything there – including apps about controversial figures like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

In 2010, Italian developer Luigi Marino made a media splash with an app about dictator Benito Mussolini. The iPhone app of Mussolini’s speeches was the second-highest paid app in the Italian iTunes store a week after launching despite criticism for giving voice to Il Duce’s diehard fans. The app, available in the US store but published in Italian, costs $0.99 with additional in-app purchases for maps and videos.

It seems there is a kind of double standard for quote apps of controversial figures. For example, the US iTunes store features a bunch Dalai Lama teachings and quotes apps, but these were all removed from China’s iTunes store leading to cries of censorship. And if Il Duce doesn’t do it for you, there are still apps available on Che Guevara and Franco, too.

After Mussolini made a hasty exit for copyright violations, it was reinstated soon after and has been available ever since. Marino kept on developing apps, adding iStalin, Hitler and iGandhi to the store.

He told told Cult of Mac that there were some hiccups getting the Hitler app into iTunes. In fact, it remains unpublished in the Italian store after Jewish groups protested but it is on sale in Germany, where Mein Kampf has been banned since 1945. It’s the grim jaw of Mussolini, however, that Marino says attracts the most buyers.

“I still get emails every day about iMussolini,” Marino, who lives in Naples, Italy, said. “There is a lot of engagement – in my opinion it increases in times when there are more political problems.”

A $1.99 iPad app version released in March allows users to upload pics of fascist memorabilia to a gallery and share info from the app on Twitter, Facebook or via email.

Marino, now CEO at mobile development agency Creact, says he has about 20-25,000 users registered for push notifications for iMussolini.

When you buy an iPhone, you agree to live peacefully within the beautiful walled garden that Apple’s engineers have created. All the important decisions have been made for you, from the font size in iMessage, to wallpaper options, even the way you align app icons on a page and name folders.

Having Apple’s team do all the work is nice, but it also means you can’t install any app you want. However, some daring developers have managed to sneak their way through the App Store approval process long enough to completely shock us before being quickly ejected from paradise. Wander into darker corners of the App Store with us as we take a look at 10 of the most extreme apps Apple has banned.

Girls Around Me

We caused quite a stir last year when we broke the story about Girls Around Me — an iOS app by Russian-based app developer i-Free that allowed users to stalk women in their neighborhood without those women’s knowledge, right down to their most personal details.

Foursquare was quick to respond within hours, cutting off the API access that the app relied upon to function. Facebook also reached out quickly with a reminder on how to keep your photos private, and then Apple dealt the final deathblow with official banishment from the App Store, but the app still served as a punch-in-the-face reminder that you never know who’s accessing your data and what they’re using it for.

I Am Rich

I Am Rich’s sealed its spot as a legend in the history of banned iOS apps, not because it gave users some controversial function, but because it charged users $999.99 to do absolutely nothing. Never again will you get to spend a grand for an utterly useless program that just displays a red gem to flaunt your wealth to passersby after Apple banned the app in 2008.

WikiLeaks

Ever since the Wikileaks dumped hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables up on their site for everyone to see, traditional companies have been trying to disassociate themselves from the whistle-blowing wiki. In rapid order, Wikileaks lost the support of its host, Amazon, their DNS provider, PayPal, and MasterCard. Then Julian Assange got a ballsy idea to create an iOS app so users could get all his leaked docs on the go. Apple wasn’t keen on the idea and banned the Wikileaks app for failing to meet the personal attacks part of the user agreement, and said it could be a potential threat to iOS users.

Baby Shaker

Baby Shaker only lasted a few hours before outrage over this game – where you silenced the kid by shaking the iPhone until their eyes get X’d out — got it whisked out of the iTunes store. Apple eventually admitted that approving the app was a mistake.

Prohibition 2: Dope Wars

Ever dream of being a dope dealer, slinging dope with the best of ’em just like those guys on the The Wire? Prohibition 2: Dope Wars allowed users to pretend to be drug dealers in New York City, trying to make fat stacks of mad cheddar in 30-days by selling PCP, ecstasy, cocaine, acid, and all manner of other illegal substances. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs didn’t have similar dreams of being the next Heisenberg, and the app was quickly banned.

Super Monster Bros By Adventure Time Pocket Free Games

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 week, we have something to keep you from getting lost, something to let you combine your photos, and another thing to help you breathe again after your traumatic shopping experience.

Here you go:

InstaPhotoBlend – Photo & Video – $1.99

If you’ve ever looked at two of your photos and wished that you could somehow transmogrify them into one Frankenphoto, you might want to check out InstaPhotoBlend. It’s image-editing software for your iOS device that uses a simple interface to let you combine and blend two photos together.

You start by selecting two pictures — one top layer and one bottom layer — and then fiddle around with the controls to control opacity and adjust color until you’ve created the perfect thing that used to be two things. After that, you can post your masterpiece to social media, email or text it, or just hang onto it until the time is right. It’s a fun little app to play with, and it’s not hard to create some interesting effects.

InstaPhotoBlend

Backstep – Travel – Free

If you’ve ever traveled to an unfamiliar city, found a new café, or parked at a SuperTarget, you know the value of being able to get back to where you were. Backstep wants to help. It’s a new app by developer D Leak that lets you drop a waypoint at your current location with a single tap on your screen. You name the waypoint, then call up your various pins individually, and Backstep will show where you are in relation to it and update as you head back to your starting point. It’s a simple app with the cleanest of interfaces, and it might save you a few fights over which arbitrarily named row your car is in.

Backstep

Calming Breath – Health & Fitness – Free

Breathing is simple, right? In, out, repeat? It is if you’re a normal, healthy person with a positive outlook on life and no major stress, but if you’re an anxiety-ridden mess like I am, you occasionally have some difficulty.

Enter Calming Breath, a simple, one-screen app that sits you down and times your inhales and exhales. It works on a four-second inhale, six-second exhale system and includes an animation of a pair of lungs that fill and empty in time, if you’re a visual person.

If you prefer to have your eyes closed, you can also set the app to vibrate at the beginnings and ends of breaths, and all of this sounds completely ridiculous, but if you’re in the middle of a panic attack, you need all the guidance you can get. Calming Breath is simple, easy, and it does what it needs to do.

Calming Breath

Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has compiled this list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Best New Albums

Ryan Hemsworth – Guilt Trips

 Canadian DJ and producer Ryan Hemsworth has made a name for himself by producing a mountain of spacey instrumentals for rappers like Deniro Farrar,  Shady Blaze, and Berkley’s 100s while also creating some hot remixes from artists such as Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Cat Power, but Guilt Trips marks Hemsworth first solo record, and what a joy it is.

Hemsworth’s sound teeters along the edge of hip-hop and dance music without fully crossing over into either for a truly unique and grounded sound that’s sprinkled with enough R&B to keep it away from being “too experimental” for casual listeners without drowning in pop.

After releasing his Still Awake EP in May, Hemsworth’s Guilt Trip focuses on adding clarity to his sound by reining in his wandering instrumentals and giving vocals a stronger emphasis. You won’t find any superstar guest appearances on the album, but featured verses from spitters like Haleek Maul and Kitty prove that Hemsworth can produce hit pop tracks like the best of them.

iTunes – $9.99

Poliça – Shulamith

If Shulamith proves anything, it’s that the Minneapolis group’s sudden success is no fluke. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon once famously said that POLIÇA was the best band he ever heard, and he sings along to the mysterious lyrics of “Tiff.”

The ambling percussion of “I Need $” shares the brio and aesthetic of hip-hop as Channy Leaneagh glides and freestyles over the song’s icy plains. Her haunting processed vocals meld with the echoing effect of two drum kits, a super-funky bass guitar, and the trip-hoppy exhalations of an alien synthesizer. I wall makes a potent statement: to be a modern creature is to reside in the surreal space between the digital and the organic.

iTunes – $9.99

Katy Perry – PRISM

A lot’s changed since Katy Perry catapulted into superstardom with her breakaway hit “I Kissed A Girl” in 2008. Marriage, divorce and an ocean of fame have led to some of Katy’s bluntest lyrics to-date on her third album.

PRISM is chock full of the bouncy pop tunes Perry’s become famous for while also covering some rocky ground in the singer’s personal life. As the lead songwriter of the album’s opening track, “Roar,” Perry kicks off her third studio endeavor with stadium-sized guitars, a stomping beat and an epic sing-along hook. Perry’s assertive return is underscored by other early tastes from the album, including “Dark Horse,” which features a menacing bass line, crackling beat, and a sharply styled guest verse from Juicy J of Three 6 Mafia fame. PRISM’s parade of singles continues with the banging house-influenced groove and whistling hook of Perry’s euphoric, party-all-night anthem “Walking on Air” while tracks like “By the Grace of God” divulge into the heartbreak of Perry’s failed marriage to Russell Brand.

iTunes – $11.99

Best New Books

The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

“The Goldfinch” starts off with a bang – literally – as a 13-year-old New Yorker named Theo and his mother are rocked by an explosion at a New York museum. Theo survives the blast, but his mother doesn’t, leading to 800-pages detailing the aftermath of his experience over the course of a decade and a half.

Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him and tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small 17th-century painting that he jacked from the museum during the chaos of the explosion.

The book moves us through the life of Theo as an adult, as he drifts between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of antiques in his shop. He is alienated and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle as the novel unfolds with a healthy serving of suspense.

iTunes – $10.99

Allegiant

by Veronica Roth

Teens who have been sucked into Veronica Roth’s Divergent series will be ready to lock themselves away to finish Roth’s final book in the Divergent trilogy – “Allegiant.”

The story picks up with Tris Prior who’s witnessed the downfall of the faction-based society she’s believed in her whole life. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps  she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is worse than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

If you liked “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” and are looking for a new teen series to dive into, try this. But get started now if you want to finish before the Hollywood adaptation hits theaters in March 2014.

iTunes – $6.99

Provence, 1970

by Luke Barr

“Provence, 1970” is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now.

The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In “Provence, 1970” he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

Best New Movies

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Cut)

Just in time to prepare fans for the wide-release of the “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” Apple has released an exclusive extended cut of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” this week that contains tons of new Extras that almost double the length of the original film.

Set in Middle Earth 60 years before the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, the movie follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, who is conned swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

Hardcore LotR fans might take offense that the plot of the movie doesn’t exactly follow the details of the book, but casual fans will be enthralled with Bilbo’s journey after he’s approached by the wizard Gandalf to join a company of dwarves set on retaking their homeland. What follows is steady medley of action and suspense as Bilbo and the dwarves find themselves caught in a series of goblin tunnels on their march East. Oh yeah, and Gollum and his Precious make a brief appearance too, so you finally find out where Bilbo got the all-powerful One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

iTunes – $19.99

The Conjuring 

Halloween is fastly approaching, which means its time to gather your friends and load up the scary movies at night to scare the living shit out of each other. Classic horror movies are always a great choice, but if you’re looking for something freaky and new, try “The Conjuring.”

The film details the horrifying “true story” of world renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorrain Warren who are called out to help a family terrorized by a dark presence on their secluded farm. After waking up with a mysterious bruise and finding their dog, Sadie, dead, mom Carolyn calls the paranormal investigators for help. As you can imagine, all hell breaks lose once Ed and Lorrain arrive at the house, making for a truly terrifying movie experience.

iTunes – $14.99

Turbo

Over the last decade Hollywood has given us animated movies about rats, Kung-Fu pandas, dragons, ants, and clown-fish, so why not give a nitrous oxide-charged snail a shot at the big screen?

Voiced by Ryan Reynolds, “Turbo” is a tale about a misfit snail with a need for speed as he strives to earn a slot in the Indy 500. While Turbo craves speed all of his fellow snails — including his brother Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti) — seem to savor the slow life. At one point, Turbo gets sucked into the intake valve of a speeding muscle car. After getting spit through the volatile nitrous oxide that fuels the car, Turbo is imbued with new masterful speed powers that allow him to travel at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.

Armed with his speedy new powers, Turbo’s journey is far from over as he realizes his dreams are finally within reach, but runs into a number of obstacles on his way to the Indy 500. Other actors appearing in family-friendly movie include Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Peña, Bill Hader, Luis Guzman and even Snoop Dogg

iTunes – $14.99

In the early 90s, I drove across the States in a clapped-out Mustang, from the East Coast to California. It was a leisurely drive. I was in my mid-20s and drifting.

I stayed for a stretch in a seedy motel on the Las Vegas strip, at one point sleeping one week for free in exchange for building a wall by the front entrance. I don’t know why the motel owner agreed to this. My roommate – a hitchhiker I’d picked up — and I had never built a wall before. We stretched the work out for a week. But as it grew higher, it became more unstable and we were evicted when it fell over in a shower of bricks.

The night before I’d met a French guy. He claimed to be ex-Foreign Legion. Short but muscular, he radiated fitness and strength. He told me about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Most of the injuries, he said, occurred in the week before the actual running of the bulls. People gather in the streets to drink all night and brave young men climb the lampposts to jump off, trusting the crowd will catch them. Sometimes they plunge right through the upstretched arms.

My roommate and I split up and I drove with the French guy to Death Valley. He claimed to know a remote cabin in the mountains above the Valley floor. It was a three-hour, 13-mile hike, he told me, but the cabin was full of food and we could stay as long as we liked.

Although it sounded a little fantastical, I parked the car off the highway. He advised me to hide it as best as possible – we didn’t want anyone breaking in.

As we hiked across the valley floor toward the distant mountains, he told me how he’d nearly been executed in South America. He was travelling alone in the jungle and was sleeping in the trees to stay safe from jaguars. One morning he woke to find himself covered in blood. There was sticky blood all over his body, from head to toe. At first he suspected that something had been killed in the tree above him, but then he realized it was his own blood. He had been attacked by vampire bats in the middle of the night and they’d drooled his own blood onto his skin.

Afraid of a rabies infection, he headed for the nearest settlement. But he crossed the border into a neighboring country and was locked up by the army, which was battling local rebels. In the cell, he started to exhibit the first symptoms of rabies. But he had more pressing troubles. The army accused him of being a rebel spy and threatened to execute him. They didn’t believe his cockamamie story of solo jungle hikes and vampire bats. It took days of beatings and interrogations – plus his advancing rabies — to convince them of his innocence.

We crossed the Valley floor and started to climb upwards, following a rocky dry river bed full of huge boulders. I was getting more and more nervous. The French guy was crazy! There was no cabin here. Free food and board? In Death Valley? What was I thinking? He was luring me off the road to kill me. He’d take my Mustang keys and disappear. No one knew where I was. Not a soul. The name of the place began to gnaw at me, ringing in my head like a crazy mantra: Death Valley, Death Valley, Death Valley!

When I was a kid, my friends and I hitchhiked everywhere. We hitchhiked to school most days. We hitchhiked all across the country for camping holidays. We’d just take sleeping bags – no tent – and bed down in open fields. This was Britain in the 1980s, which didn’t seem particularly dangerous. But like the US, the UK is high up on UNICEF’s ranking of countries for child abuse.

I have my own kids now, and the thought of them hitchhiking wherever they please seems crazy. I’d never allow it. But they take buses all over San Francisco, and I have no problem with them hailing a car using Uber or Lyft. Because they are using an app, they’re not getting into a car with a stranger.

Likewise, we’ve swapped our house with strangers several times (AirBnB – read on for my wife Traci’s account) and I regularly buy used goods from Craigslist and eBay.

These apps affirm my deeply held belief that most people are fundamentally decent.

I digress: back to Death Valley. I kept trying to get behind the French guy so that I could pick up a boulder and smash his skull in. But he took my falling back as a sign of tiredness and he’d wait up to help me.

I was getting desperate. Death Valley! Death Valley! And then there was the cabin. Sitting on flat near the river bed, just shy of the lip of the mountain. An old miner’s cabin built around the turn of the century. It had four cots and, as promised, it was full of dry and canned food left by previous visitors. Over the years, it had accumulated into quite a hoard. We stayed for a few days, exploring the abandoned mine and mountaintop, which had unbelievable views across Death Valley in one direction, and across the Nevada desert in another.

When we hiked back down to the car, it was just as we left it, except someone had used their finger to write a message in the dust on the back windshield: “Clean Me.”

We often underestimate the experience of having wireless headphones, but once you try the Air-Fi Runaway Bluetooth headphones, you’ll understand the hype.

They’re sleek, comfortable, wireless, bluetooth compatible, they sound great, and they’re 50% off at just $49.99 – and they include shipping to continental USA customers.

Yes, Kickstarter projects are still a dime a dozen, but this game is worth your attention.

It’s Sentris, a music-creation tool that masquerades as a puzzle game. Want to play a music or rhythm game without having to figure out how to hold a plastic guitar? Sentris is the game for you.

We saw Sentris last month at the 2013 Seattle Indies eXpo (SIX3), which was co-located with the Penny Arcade Expo in downtown Seattle.

Developer Samantha Kalman hopes to release a full game–she’s only put together a stunning prototype at this point–and she’s taken time to explain why in the video below.

There’s nothing I like better than a game that charms from the get-go, and delightfully indie Towncraft is one of those games.

Developer Flat Earth Games has created a gentle yet deep crafting game that plays as equal parts Sim City and Minecraft, with hundreds of crafting recipes, super cute music, and adorable artwork.

What’s not to like?

Take a look in your local bike emporium and you’ll see zillions of options for mounting your iPhone onto your handlebars. Wahoo’s PROTKT, as its name suggests, goes for boxy protection above all else, although the iPhone within remains quite usable. But should you go for this coddling case, or would you be better off with a super-simple silicone band?