I love my pets, I do. I have two stubborn, cute, snorty little pugs and I consider them part of the family. That’s why I sort of snorted myself when I saw the IndieGogo project page for Petzila, an odd little videoconferencing gadget that purports to let you connect to your pampered pooch via the magic of the internet and your iPhone.

The Petzila lets you see and talk to your doggy friend, and even dispense a treat with a tap on your iPhone screen. How fun is that? It’s odd, is what it is, and while I’m sure my pugs would love a magical treat from the new box on the wall, I doubt they’d know what to do with the disembodied sound of my voice coming from the speaker on the thing.

Well, that’s not true. They’d probably end up doing what they do when I stick my head out the window to call them in. They’ll look around, not see me, and then ignore the heck out of me.

T-Mobile is abruptly ending its ‘$0 Down Summer Sale’ on the iPhone 5 and 4S tomorrow. The promotion allowed customers to walk out of a store with a new iPhone and no upfront charges. The cost of the phone was then recouped through smaller, monthly payments.

As of Saturday, newer iPhones can only be bought on T-Mobile with a larger upfront payment that more closely matches the subsidized retail cost at other carriers.

Apple names a new and noteworthy app each week as its App of the Week. This week, it’s Simplebot’s Rise Alarm Clock, a universal alarm clock that’s getting quite a bit of buzz in the tech sector.

Let’s face it, alarm clocks are a dime nickel a dozen, so it’s ironic to see one hit the top spot on the App Store. The app evokes another big buzz app, Clear: it’s well-designed, looks great, and works with simple swipes and taps; what’s not to love?

In the ongoing antitrust case regarding e-book price fixing, the presiding judge has denied Apple’s plea for mercy over the Department of Justice’s ruling proposal. The DoJ found Apple guilty of conspiring with publishers to raise prices on e-books with the iBookstore, and Apple continues to plead not guilty despite the fact that all of the publishers have settled outside of court.

The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled in favor of Apple today by finding Samsung guilty of patent infringement in two cases. This marks the ITC’s final ruling from the original complaint Apple filed against Samsung back in 2011, reports FOSS Patents. Apple won a decisive victory against Samsung last year that involved over a half billion dollars in damages, and President Obama recently vetoed a sales ban on older Apple products that the ITC had awarded Samsung.

KeyMe is a New York-based startup that has released an iPhone app for storing and and securely sharing digital copies of physical keys. Yes, you read that right. Instead of going completely digital and abandoning the concept of a traditional lock and key altogether, KeyMe is blending the analog with the digital.

The app stores pictures you take on your iPhone of your key, and in the event of a lockout, the digital copy can be given to a locksmith.

Getting into the psyche of any major historical figure is a difficult task, especially when you’ve never even met them, so to sympathize with Steve Jobs’ dick-ish behavior for his role in JOBS, Ashton Kutchers says he thought of Steve as kind of like a great football coach.

During an appearance on The Colbert Report, Kutcher says he can totally relate to why Steve Jobs berated people, because his high school football coach/uncle used to throw temper tantrums to make the team better too.

Kutcher told Colbert that he also thinks the way Steve sought love and appreciation from people was by obsessing about making perfect products for them, so that kind of justified being an asshole to people.

Here’s the full interview:

Remember Twitter’s #music app for the iPhone? No? Well you’re not alone. The app has only been around since April and it has already faded into the App Store’s deep recess of obscurity. It hasn’t stayed on any of the top charts while apps like Spotify and Rdio continue to gain in popularity.

But Twitter isn’t giving up just yet. Today an update was released to #music that brings more tools for discovering music, including the ability to scan an iPhone’s music library.

Take a moment and breathe. That’s what new, meditative space building sim rymdkapsel wants us to do. The concept here is to create and expand a space station (rymdkapsel means “space capsule” in Swedish), defending against waves of ever tougher alien spaceships. The goal is to survive as long as possible, reaching up to four monolith structures.

The game itself–originally released on Sony’s PlayStation Vita handheld–is hypnotic, slow-paced, and calming. There’s a strange sense of joy and peace that descends as players build their space station using Tetris-shaped block pieces, sending Pong-shaped minions to build new corridors, gather resources, research the monoliths, and take up arms to defend against the incoming waves of alien shooter ships.

Looks like the venerable video game company is looking to get in on some of GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons action with Taito’s own arcade-music mashup iOS game, Groove Coaster Zero.

The two companies have just announced a new collaboration in which Groove Coaster Zero gets original and remixed background music from breakout hit Puzzle & Dragons as playable levels in Groove Coaster Zero. In addition, Puzzle & Dragons will get some special Groove Coaster Zero-themed dungeons along with classic Space Invader characters. That’s a mouthful, but super exciting, and it’s coming August 12.

Apple’s Passbook feature in iOS hasn’t really taken off as quickly as people thought it would, but that hasn’t prevented Samsung from throwing developers into making its own Passbook clone. We first got our first look at Samsung Wallet back in February at MWC, but the the app is finally ready for primetime and available on Google Play.

The app is only supported on the Galaxy S3, S4, Note 1 and Note 2, and you have to sign-in with one of those silly Samsung accounts, but if you’re already nose deep in S Health, S Beam, Samsung Link and all the other half-baked Samsung apps you’ll feel right at home.

Here are the release notes:

Beaver Tap Games, comprised of Mike Meade and Mike Gaughen, has polished the speedrun hook game to a fine sheen. Echoing Rocketcat Games’ Hook Champ and Super QuickHook, the team’s first game, Mikey Shorts, garnered a ton of praise from critics and fans alike.

With this second release, Mikey Hooks, the team has again raised the bar for well designed levels, a whimsical art style, and a solid control scheme that works surprisingly well on the touch screen. Fans of the genre and newcomers alike will find plenty to love in this leveled speedrun platforming game.

I may not be a designer, but I know what I like. And even with my lack of craftsmanship in design, I do have a sense of realizing when a color is just a bit, well… a little off. But what I don’t know how to do (at least with ease) is how to fix that “offness” when I really need to.

So I don’t fix it at all.

Only when people who have more design sense than I do tell me that the color that I thought was “a little off” is actually very off do I feel bad about my decision to just let it be. That’s when this app—currently on sale through Cult of Mac Deals—probably could have come in handy.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is touted as “the professional color-matching application for your Mac” and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $29 for a limited time.

I know a guy who opens the same 25 or so tabs each day, checking email, news, websites he likes to read, etc. I often ask him why he doesn’t just use RSS or something, but he usually mumbles about liking the layouts of individual web pages.

Whatever. My friend likes to open a ton of tabs every day, and he does so with a bookmarked folder full of those tabs. Now, he created this bookmark folder manually, but there’s an easier way, using either Safari or Chrome

Here’s how.

2013 is, so far, what might be considered a year of regrouping for Apple. The company has seen huge success in the PC, smartphone and tablet markets, but it’s also pushed those about as far as they can go: Incremental improvements, not revolutions, are what we can expect for the Mac, iPhone and iPad from here on out. Meanwhile, the next big thing — the iWatch, the iTV, whatever — is still on the horizon.

To outsiders, it looks like Apple has stalled. Far from it. You only need to look at the changes Apple is making with iOS 7 to see that Cupertino isn’t standing still, and the company has signalled that it is committed to the future of OS X for at least the next 10 years. That said, all the products Apple is set to announce next month — the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C, the iPad mini 2 and the iPad 5 — are just sequels to what it’s already done.

People are getting impatient for the next major Apple revolution. And it’s not just outsiders. A new report suggests that Apple’s own board of directors is “deeply concerned” about Cupertino’s perceived slackening in the pace of innovation.

Adding textured filters to your photos: RAD!
Adding pre-made textured filters to your photos? Lame.

That’s why you need to make your own filters right now, and Geri Centonze from iPhoneLife is here to tell you how.

Although it was a great idea, this notion of a cheap Android game console, the Ouya left a lot to be desired at launch. The hardware had some obvious deficiencies, like controller dead spots, but more importantly, the game library at launch was practically non-existent.

Right now, it looks like the Ouya is a dud: a great idea that just didn’t have a chance because it couldn’t get a push. But you know who might be able to take that same idea and get developers to treat it more seriously? Amazon. And they’re working to do just that.

With a new story concerning the extraordinary lengths the U.S. Government is seemingly taking to spy on its citizens’ digital lives hitting the news every day now, President Obama met Apple CEO Tim Cook and a number of other tech executives to discuss government surveillance.

Inkflow 3.0 adds an amazing new feature to the vector-based sketching app: InkPort. Inkport lets you import your paper sketches from the real world and turn them into editable vector art, just using the iPad’s camera.

We’ve known for a long, long time that the fifth-generation iPad would borrow the iPad mini’s design cues and have thinner bezels on the side for a more streamlined form factor. Heck, iLounge’s Jeremy Horowitz said as much as early as January of this year, claiming that the iPad 5 would be “a lot smaller than one would guess is possible” with “virtually no left or right bezels.”

For months now, we’ve seen parts leak out of Asia confirming that report, including cases, rear shells, and more. Today, we have leaked images of the front panel and digitizer. And yup! Look, Ma! No bezels.

We’re probably about a month and a half away from the debut of the next iPhone, which means it’s about the time when we historically see deals on the latest model hitting the big boxes as they look to clear inventory. And right on cue, here comes Best Buy, with an aggressive offer on the iPhone. But there are bigger discounts than just that, including some sweet deals on select MacBook Pros.

If you liked my how-to on rolling your own ImageMagick-based OS X Services using shell scripts, you’re going to love OptiPNG. It’s another command line utility that can be used to shrink PNGs without losing any quality.

Would you like a Leica, but don’t-a like-a the price tag? You could do what I did, and buy a $70 Leica strap for your cheap-ass $1,300 camera. Or you could buy this cute Leica-inspired SD card holder. Price: a mere $185.

Grain, light leaks, color shifts, low contrast caused by lens flare—these are all familiar Instagrammatical filters which mimic the limits of film. And ironically, they were all considered Bad Things when people actually shot with film.

Now we try to avoid digital noise just as we add back fake analog noise (grain). But what about native digital glitches? There is—as you have no doubt predicted—an app for that. It’s called Glitché.

If you use Pinboard (and if you don’t, you should), then you might also consider using a Mac app to save and browse all those achieved bookmarks. Which brings us to Shiori, a very plain-yet-pretty iOS 7-inspired Mac app for your Pinboard.