Now that winter has hit the country, cycling has moved indoors for much of the U.S. That means straddling a stationary bike or throwing your trusty road or mountain bike up on a stand (or if you’re really brave, rollers).

That’s where the Xspin comes in. it’s a small box filled with sensors and a low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 radio that attaches to a crank arm and sends speed, distance and cadence data to an accompanying app — either one of two developed by its parent company, Pafers, or a handful of popular third-party cycling apps, like Strava or MapMyRide. It’ll also work with ellipticals (though it obviously attaches differently, since ellipticals don’t have cranks).

Today Tapbots released a big update for Tweetbot for Mac that brings smoother scrolling and the ability to quickly reply to mentions and DMs via Notification Center in OS X Mavericks. The update also brings a number of bug fixes and performance improvements for Apple’s latest desktop OS.

Here’s the full change log:

It’s fantastic to be able to swipe up from the bottom of the screen in any app or the home screen to turn Wi-Fi on or off, enable or disable Bluetooth, and the like. Control Center in iOS 7 has really solved some of my biggest issues with iOS in general.

However, there are times when I’m playing a game or using a certain app that I don’t really want the Control Center to pop up when i use the bottom of the screen.

Thankfully, Apple’s given us a way to disable it.

iOS users that long for something other than Safari will be delighted to know that Google has released a free update for Chrome for iOS.

The new updated includes an Autofill feature that lets users complete forms with just a few clicks, similar to the autofill feature Apple introduced in iOS 7 with iCloud Keychain. Along with some stability enhancements and bug fixes, Google has also improved image searches by adding the ability to long press on an image to search for related images.

Here are the release notes:

Upcycling — Entertainment — Free

Green-lifestyle blog Eve of Reduction saw your landfill at Whole Foods the other day and thinks it looks tired and kinda flabby. It wants to help, so it has a thing you might want to check out.

Upcycling is a free app full of instructions and suggestions for repurposing and repairing out-of-use items. It’ll show you how to reupholster a chair, what you can do with used paint cans, and show you cool things other people have done with their would-be junk. It’s all arranged and indexed conveniently within the app, and even if you don’t do anything in there, it’s still interesting to browse through.

Upcycling

I mentioned high-concept games with evocative titles earlier this week when I reviewed Tilt to Live 2, and here’s another one.

Don’t Shoot Yourself! is a quick, often frustrating little game in which the name says it all. You control a little ship (I guess) trapped inside of a series of shapes. Your main goal is to keep moving for until a number on the right side of the screen counts down to zero, and all the while your little guy is firing bullets all hither and thither. Your secondary goal is not to fly into any of those bullets.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because it is. But it’s still a game worth trying if only to see if you’re up to the challenge.

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. But short of installing an air-gap, what can you really do to improve security on your iDevices?

The good news is that your iPhone is probably the safest phone you can use, but you would be correct not to trust any U.S-based company with your data, even Apple (which makes its money selling you shiny toys and may therefore be less interested in selling your data).

But if you want to move as much of your data as possible away from iCloud, here are some service and products to help you. You won’t find them as convenient as Apple’s built-in services, but they might keep your data a little safer.

The official Apple Store app is finally available on iPad, more than three years after it made its debut on the iPhone.

It offers almost all of the features you’ve come to expect from the iPhone version, including high-resolution photography that lets you see products in “amazing detail,” the ability to find your nearest Apple store and make Genius bar appointments, and lots more.

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Thanks to Apple’s tireless vetting of App Store apps, it’s tricky for an app to flat-out snoop on you. Then again, the behavior of some apps could be thought of as snooping if you squint and look at them the wrong way.

Foursquare is all about location, but that’s because it knows exactly where you are. And Facebook is… Well, Facebook likes to know things about you.

But you can keep earning Mayorships and tweeting your pictures without telling everyone where you live, or letting them post your location to Facebook. Just follow our handy guide to the privacy settings of various famous apps.

If you’re headed to a location where you’re not sure of the cell reception, sending a Map to your iPhone or iPad from Mavericks is obviously of little use.

If you need to get a PDF of a section of the map so you can print it out, or just send it to your iPhone for offline access, it’s fairly simple. Like any other app on Mac OS X, you can print Maps using the standard dialog, or–with Maps in Mavericks–you can simply export to PDF.

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple made sharing files between two Macs easier than ever before with AirDrop… but that only works if you’re on the same network. What if you want something as easy to use as AirDrop, but with people outside the range of your Time Capsule?

Enter Infinit, a slick new Mac file-sharing app that makes it effortless to send files to anyone, even if their computer is turned off.

Following yesterday’s somewhat underwhelming release of the Ace Power, the first iOS 7 compatible controller, accessory guru Logitech has gotten into the action, unveiling the Powershell game controller for iPhone 5, 5s, 5c and fifth-gen iPod touch.

A year ago, Microsoft released the SmartGlass app, an app for iPhone and iPad that let you navigate your Xbox 360 with swipes and taps on your touchscreen, and even use your device as a second-screen in supported games.

This morning, Microsoft officially released the Xbox One, their follow-up to the Xbox 360. If you loved SmartGlass, though, don’t worry that it has been dropped from the experience: the Xbox One Smartglass app is now here.

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

The safest way to use your iPhone is to switch it off, open it up and remove the battery. But this is clearly impractical if you want to do anything more than pretend you have an Android phone.

Some guides have shown us how to increase our security by switching off all manner of services, from iCloud to geotagging for our photos. But if you do that, why buy an iPhone in the first place? And even if you only want to make calls, no amount of on-phone hackery will help you if the folks from The Wire are on your tail.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be aware of what your iPhone is up to, and with this in mind we bring you a guide to the hidden and not-so-hidden settings you’ll need in iOS 7.

Remember that time Cult of Mac reported that Apple’s oft-maligned iOS Maps function steered people the wrong way across Fairbanks Airport Taxiway? If you’re anything like this writer, you probably either chuckled at the egregiousness of the error or else were momentarily aghast, and then went on with the rest of your day.

Well, in the eyes of some what you should have been thinking is: “hey, I could probably sue over that.”

Perhaps it’s better that you didn’t, however, because the class action lawsuit that has been filed against Apple for iOS Maps is a bit of a headscratcher.

If you’re looking for a way to get rich overnight, here’s an idea: somehow borrow $1 billion without anyone knowing what you’re doing, invest it all in Apple shares the night before an earnings call (when the stock price is all but guaranteed to rise), immediately sell the next morning, return the original capital, and then pocket the profit without anyone the wiser.

Sound too straightforward to be true? That’s because it is — although that didn’t stop 40 year old trader David Miller from trying the stunt back in 2012.

How would you react if you learned that Apple planned to force users to upgrade their iOS devices by making the old ones explode after a set period of time, like secret documents in a James Bond movie? (Well, this writer would push away his old model iPhone 5 for one thing!).

While this may not quite be the case (at all), an iPhone 3GS user in Beijing is alleging that his smartphone suddenly exploded on November 13 while lying on his bedside table. Fortunately no one was hurt.

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine 

Architecture hasn’t really ever been considered too important in the brick and mortar-averse tech industry. It wasn’t all that long ago that digital utopians proclaimed physical geography dead altogether, with a vocal minority apparently pleased to leave the actual world behind them and embrace the cyberspace of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the technological breakthroughs of Silicon Valley have advanced almost inversely to the region’s architecture. In a brave new world of lush rolling hills and the always impressive San Francisco Bay, the most that the majority of companies have managed to come up with are drab industrial parks filled with two-story, cubicle-lined buildings.

Sarcasm doesn’t travel well over text message — and I can say that through bitter experience. I’ve probably come close to being slapped, dumped, kicked in the crotch, fired, and/or run over by a riding mower because of some sarcastic text I’ve sent that was misconstrued as mean when it was supposed to be hilarious.

Or so I’ve imagined; I have no real gauge, because in each instance I couldn’t actually see the reaction on the face of the recipient. At least one of the developers behind React Messenger must have faced the same problem, because they’ve come up with a solution that snaps and sends a quick, expressive selfie along with each text.

Apple’s new glass plant in Arizona has finally received the official seal of approval from the local government and some newly released documents reveal that in order to lure the tech behemoth to the Valley of the Sun, the Arizona Commerce Authority sweetened the pot by offering Apple a $10 million grant, plus some tax incentives.

The Gilbert Public School Board was the last of eight entities to approve the tax breaks for Apple, who plans to build a high-tech glass manufacturing plant in Mesa that will bring over 700 jobs to the area plus an additional 1,300 construction jobs while the plant is being built. According to one third-party economic study, Apple’s investment is estimated to generate more than $102 million in tax revenue over five years.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear, an Android-powered smartwatch that Samsung has been calling “the next big thing” in commercials, is officially a dud. Why? After BusinessKorea reported that Samsung has sold less than 50,000 units to date, Samsung quickly tried to spin the bad news by saying that it had in fact sold 800,000 units, making it the “most sold wearable watch available in the market place.”

Right. The only problem is that Samsung later confirmed that the 800,000 number was actually for units shipped, not sold, which is a big difference.

If you’re tired of having to watch movies on specific devices, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is going to set you free! With The MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack, you’ll be able to rip and convert movies, DVDs and other videos to a number of platforms. For only $19.99 – a savings of 81% – you can watch almost anything and everything on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV and Android devices.

Today Twitter announced a couple of new features that are coming to its official iOS and Google Play apps. The first is search filters for easily discovering different types of media, like photos or video. You can also toggle the results to only see related tweets from accounts you follow.

Apple and the city of Cupertino have reached an agreement that will see the tech giant paying more taxes to the city as part of the deal for its new Apple Campus 2 project.

The new deal is up to receive final approval Tuesday night. If approved, Apple’s tax increase will actually come from a reduction in the percentage of the tax rebate the city gives Apple each year, according to a report from the LA Times.

Under its current deal with the Apple, the city of Cupertino gives back about 50% of the sales taxes it receives from Apple-related purchases. From now on that number will only be about 35% of sales taxes.

Here’s what Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney had to say about the new tax agreement:

Siri continues to become more integrated into the operating system with iOS 7. We’ve already shown you how you can navigate to any of the specific settings screens on your iOS device using the clever digital assistant.

Let’s it one step further, though, and get Siri to actually DO some of the controlling of our oft-toggled settings, instead of just taking us to the specific page. Sure, you can also do this with the new iOS Control Center, but if you can’t touch your iPhone, Siri can cover it for you.