Apple announced today that some changes are coming to its Affiliate Program for digital content, as a new partnership has been forged to help the company expand the program into new countries.

The affiliate program — which allows partners to make money off iTunes content sales by directing users to certain pieces of content via affiliate links — will now be managed by two networks rather than four, as Apple has struck a deal with the Performance Horizon Group (PHG) to become a new affiliate platform partner and push the program into new territories in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Here’s the full announcement from Apple:

Rubicon, the developer behind successful iOS game, Great Big War Game, announced its latest game in development, Combat Monsters, an interesting mix of tactical, 3D monster battles with deck building card game mechanics.

The game is coming to iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and (what?) Blackberry fairly soon, so we thought it would be a good time to catch up with the Rubicon development team. We chatted with Paul Johnson, managing director and co-founder of Rubicon, about Combat Monsters. Here’s what he had to say.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

With the start of school quickly approaching for many (and even quicker for some), the time to stock up on supplies is well underway. One of the key things any student needs is a backpack

When you’re looking for one of these it is no longer enough to find one that will carry enough books. Today’s backpack needs to be a bit more diverse considering that digital devices have become firmly entrenched in our lives.

So when looking for a backpack, here are 3 things to consider:

Rumors of Apple releasing a gold-colored iPhone have been hard for some to swallow, but according to AllThingsD’s sources, Apple plans to introduce a gold iPhone at the September 10th keynote.

While many Apple fans are worried that a gold iPhone would look too gaudy and doesn’t match the Apple design aesthetic, John Paczkowski’s sources says the gold iPhone will have a white face with a gold black plate and chamfered edging.

Rather than using a bold ingot gold tone many have feared, the gold iPhone will be more of a champagne color. No word on whether the gold iPhone will be priced differently than other models (we doubt it), but we’ll just have to wait and see the final product on September 10th.

Source: ATD

Barnes & Noble’s efforts to become America’s next great tablet maker haven’t really gone too well, so the company announced today that it’s ready to try something new: iOS apps.

This morning, Barnes & Noble announced it’s bringing the Nook Video service to iOS, Android and Roku devices, giving users access to a wide range of TV shows and movie just incase offerings from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime Video, WatchABC, WatchESPN, MaxGO, Showtime Anytime, and Crackle just aren’t enough to get the fix for your media addiction. 

The iPhone 5 has been on sale for almost a year now — in fact, its successor is right around the corner — and the award-winning physical puzzler World of Goo has finally been updated to support its larger 4-inch display. If you’re one of the many millions of people who love this title, this is a great excuse to play it all over again.

Apple is expected to make iOS 7 beta 7 available to registered developers today, just days after it released iOS 7 beta 6. This is expected to be the final beta before Apple seeds the Gold Master release early next month.

In OS X, all file types have a default application that opens when you double click on them. If you double click on a PDF file or a PNG file, chances are that your Mac will open it in Preview, Apple’s default PDF and image file app. If you’ve given an app like Adobe Reader, for example, permission to set itself as the default PDF app, then all PDFs will open in Reader.

Over time, you may have set apps as default that you no longer want to open your files. Conversely, you might want all JPG files to open in Preview, except one specific JPG file, which you’d like to open in Photoshop. Here’s how to make both of these situations work for you.

The most you can charge for an app on the iOS App Store is $999.99. In the early days of the App Store, a number of novelty apps came out, trying to make a quick buck by convincing gullible plutocrats to part with their money in the form of a $1,000 app download. The most notable example is I Am Rich, an iPhone app that literally did nothing except proclaim your affluence.

These days, though, the $999.99 club is made up of legitimate apps. Well, mostly.

If you bought an iMac between late 2011 and mid 2012 and your graphics have been acting up, you’re not alone… and Apple just might fix your iMac for free.

Remember Gameloft’s $80 Duo Gamer Controller? It was launched in October 2012 and it brought physical controls to our favorite Gameloft games on iOS — but it had a number of major flaws. The biggest one was that it was only compatible with Gameloft games, and that made its $80 price tag all the more bemusing.

But it’s not such a bad purchase at $6.36, which is all you’ll pay for it on Amazon right now.

Hey, did you see Jobs this weekend? If so, you probably saw it alone, in a theater completely empty except for yourself, a single loquacious cricket, and a theater usher sleeping one off. Why? Because Jobs absolutely tanked this weekend.

This post is as much for our Dear Leader Leander Kahney as much as it is for you, our wonderful and ever-curious reader. It solves a problem Leander struggled with for a full thirty seconds before tossing it to us minions in the Cult of Mac HipChat room.

The problem: How to get all the photos snapped by Leander’s twelve or so children into the same Photo Stream on the main family iMac.

For the solution, read on. Hint: it doesn’t need Photo Stream, and it uses a great feature of PhotoSync v2.0.

Can’t wait to see what Apple has in store for us with the iPad 5? Here’s what it will likely look like… face down!

Bulk editing photos? There are a few ways to do it. You could rent Photoshop every month and create some automated Actions (actually a totally sweet and powerful way to do things); you could use the command-line tool ImageMagick and wrap it in various OS X System Services; or you could just spend $10 and buy PhotoBulk.

Having been teased and tempted by so many similar gadgets in the past, I can’t quite believe that the DigiPod could ever be real. But the folks at Indiegogo at least seem to have some faith in the new pitch on their site. The DigiPod is a little insert which slips into your film SLR and turns it digital.

Mind Maps are a great way to brainstorm and visualize ideas. And plain text is a great way to hammer out lists. And Markdown is a perfect tool for quickly adding hierarchy to those lists as you write them. If only there were a way to combine these three things…

And guess what? The fairy godfather of Internet tinkering, Brett Terpstra, has already done it for you. It’s an OS X System Service that takes the messiest of Markdown lists and turns them into a format suitable for most mind-mapping apps.

Y’all know Serious Eats, right? It’s the one place on the Internet where you can go to be entertained, educated and properly fed. I’m a fan of cooking, but I generally avoid recipes on the web because it’s hard to gauge their quality until it’s too late. Serious Eats is solid every single time.

And now there’s a Newsstand magazine, and — again — it stands out above the rest.

I’m always interested to see a new iPad stand, and I’m especially interested if it can do the job of both my two favorite stands in one neat package. The stand is the Nimblstand, and it wants to replace the Origami keyboard case and stand, plus the PadPivot, or similar.

There are a couple of offers going on at Cult of Mac Deals right now that you might want to check out as your weekend comes to a close.

The good people at Motorola will probably clock me in the head with a Droid Maxx battery for saying this, but shouldn’t Google open-source Moto X technology?

This week on The CultCast: Jobs! We’ve seen it, and now the question is — is it any good? We’ll discuss the much-hyped movie (100 percent spoiler-free), Ashton Kutcher’s performance and love for the man, plus examine if the real Jobs fits the fictional portrayal.

Then, an all new Yay & Nay: September 10th edition. We’ll yes and no our way through the rumors and what we expect at the all-but-confirmed Apple iPhone event.

Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. 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 the audio adventure begin. Show notes up next!

The most vocal and active iPhone and Android fans scoff at the notion that Moto X is the new iPhone. But it’s true.

The iPhone used to represent the most elegant, innovative and fun-to-use smartphone for everybody. That status has now been taken by Motorola’s new “Google phone,” the Moto X.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” – Proverb

I’m looking forward to school starting up again. But I’m coming from a different perspective. You see, I’ve got school-aged kids and while I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve had together this summer, it’s safe to say that all of us are ready for some time away from each other. School does that…and a lot more.

The weather also won’t be cooperating with us as much as summer ends, meaning that more time inside is bound to happen. That means more time to focus on school work and less time to be distracted by the great outdoors. But just because summer is over doesn’t mean playtime has to be – which is where The Back To School Gamer Bundle comes in. In this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you’ll get 2 games at a price you name and if you pay more than the average price you’ll get an additional 4 games as well!

Google updated its flagship social network app for Google+ on iOS today, bringing it up to par with the recently released Android Google+ app update. The new features includes integration with Google Drive, the loss of Google Messenger in favor of Google Hangouts, and some new stuff for Apps for Business users.