Apple has refunded Briton Lee Neale £4,000 ($6,131) after his 8-year-old daughter Lily spent the cash on virtual items in her favorite iPad game. Lily knew the password for her father’s iTunes account, but no one expected her to use it to rack up a huge bill on in-app purchases.
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time deleting spam messages from my inbox — despite using a junk mail filter. But the issue is about to get a whole lot worse, with Google gearing up to deliver adverts to our Gmail inboxes. The messages will appear under the new Promotions tab that was recently introduced in a Gmail update, and Google is testing them on a small number of users now.
Dumb phones had a few advantages over today’s smartphones. First, their batteries lasted for what seemed like weeks between charges. And second, if the battery did die, all you lost was the ability to call and SMS people. You didn’t lose your e-mail, your camera, your iPod, the book you’re reading or the movie you were planning to watch on the train home.
So you carry a spare battery. But what if you could eliminate the need for that spare, and also ditch that creepy wrist-strengthener you insist on pumping all the time like some hyperactive pervert?
Good news! With the Mipwr Dynamo Case, you can do both.
This is the Cambridge Camera Bag, and it is supposedly inspired by the schoolbags of English children. Perhaps this was the case in past years, when only the privileged offspring of royalty and wealthy industrialists attended school, because these days English schoolkids drag their crap around in the same battered Eastpak backpacks as anyone else.
Not that this makes the Cambridge Camera Bag any less desirable. Quite the opposite, in fact, if you’ve ever met a genuine English hooligan.
A new experimental add-on for DSLRs brings Lytro-like refocus-able photos to any camera, and tosses in a few extra clever features for good measure. The KaleidoCamera, as it’s called, is a unit that sits between your lens and your camera and performs some clever magic on the light that streams into it.
UPDATE: Lucky Frame has provided us with some updated stats: Gentlemen! now has over 6,000 players on Android, with just 50 paid downloads.
Gentlemen!, a brand new title from Scottish development studio Lucky Frame, made its debut on Android and iOS last week. It’s been a pretty big success so far, with plenty of acclaim from reviewers, a mention in a British newspaper, and thousands of players worldwide.
But it’s not all good news for Lucky Frame. You see, only 20 of the players on Android actually paid Gentlemen!’s $4.99 price tag, the company revealed to Cult of Android.
The other 3,000 stole it.
Manything turns a spare iOS device into a cloud-connected security camera. Install the app, sign up for an account and leave the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with its camera pointing at your desk, your yard or hidden in a plastic bag and pointing up from the bowl of your toilet.
For any unsuspecting visitors, it will be too late. You’ll have seen everything.
The Braven 855s is pretty good for barbecues, or what some folks call “grills.” How do I know? I tried it last night. And even when I spilled cow’s blood on my un-dyed leather loafers, the music kept on going. And it sounds pretty good too.
Oh Hasselblad. As if your absurd and hideous Lunar wasn’t bad enough, you’re about to compound the embarrassment with the Stellar compact, yet another Sony NEX camera dressed up with a stupid wooden grip and a huge markup. What happened to you?
Apple is prototyping larger versions of the iPad and iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal’s supply chain sources overseas. Details are scare, but the report states that Apple is considering a 13-inch display for the iPad, which would be quite the increase from the current 9.7-inch display.
After days of being down, Apple has explained why its Developer Center is unavailable. The above message is being emailed out to registered developers and the press, revealing that the developer site was targeted by a hacker earlier this week.
Apple is saying there’s no evidence personal data was stolen, but the hack was serious enough to warrant a complete shutdown and internal restructuring of the site’s database.
Just because you talk out loud while you’re alone and hear voices in your head doesn’t mean you’re crazy.
And just because it’s Google Now you’re conversing with doesn’t mean you’re not crazy.
Crazy or not, we’re all going to have an invisible friend in the form of an everywhere, always-listening, always present Google Now.
Cult of Mac Deals has been dishing out deals and giveaways for a long time now, and this time around we’re going to up the ante a little bit. That’s because e’re giving each and every one of our Cult of Mac readers the chance to take home a brand new Mac!
You read that right. Cult of Mac Deals is giving away an all-new 13″ MacBook Air – valued at over $1000 – for free!
The Mac has become a media hub for many people. But even it could use some extra help now and again to make sure it stays organized and streamlined so that it can be a true entertainment powerhouse. Cult of Mac Deals has assembled 3 top-notch apps that aim to boost your Mac’s reputation as a media center with The Mac Media Mini Bundle.
Featuring Musictube, Minitube, and Musique, The Mac Media Mini Bundle has the ability to further innovate how it handles YouTube and simplify your music experience – which is no simple feat. During this limited time offer, you can get The Mac Media Mini Bundle for just $14.99 – a savings of 53%!
The people who believe Apple will sell a TV set are right. And the people who believe Apple won’t sell a TV set are also right. Here’s why.
This week on The CultCast: Logic Pro gets Pro’er with new features and iPad controls; Google Maps finally comes to iPad; Apple hunts for iWatch engineers; more iPad Mini retina rumors; Apple slangin’ TV deals with studios to kill commercials; we dish great computing tips on Tips Ahoooy!
Have a few laughs and get 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.
Having quality audio anywhere you go can enhance just about any situation – and Bluetooth® speakers can make that happen. Unfortunately a majority of these speakers aren’t inexpensive, so using them in any condition whatseover – especially where water is involved – can be very risky.
Not so with the product in the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer: The iShower.
The iShower is a Bluetooth®-enabled, water-resistant speaker that is compatible with the most popular Bluetooth®-enabled smartphones and tablets including iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android and just about everything else. And you can pick up the iShower during this limited time offer for only $84.99 – a savings off 22%!
We’re still finding some great new features and tricks in OS X Mavericks beta, and while it’s not a huge overhaul like the more populare iOS 7 update, Mavericks has plenty of great things going on under the hood. And some of it even on top of the hood.
Here are five more interesting tips and tricks about the latest iteration of Apple’s Mac operating system, OS X Mavericks beta.
Back in 1989, I was a young punk in college who read science fiction voraciously and had a history of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know, slow down ladies, what a catch.
Anyway, it was with unreserved glee that I started playing Shadowrun in those days, a table top role-playing game in the vein of D&D that included computers, hacking, and all sorts of megacorps, like a William Gibson novel gone magical.
Flash forward to now, and–after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign–Shadowrun Returns is headed to iOS, Mac, Android and PC. There’s a sweet launch trailer that just came out today, and a release date of just one week from now, on July 25th. Holy smoking dragon hackers!
Dyslexia is a disability that likely affects 70 – 80 percent of people with poor reading skills, with one in five students having a language-based disability that could include dyslexia.
Many folks with dyslexia have trouble differentiating between different letters of the alphabet, many of which–especially in digital text form–look very similar. Many of the letters in our alphabet, like ‘i’ and ‘j’, or ‘n’ and ‘u’ can be mistaken for each other, especially if someone has a visual processing difference and reverses or rotates the letters when reading.
There’s a new font that aims to help, and a great eBook reader, vBookz PDF Voice Reader, has recently inclded that as a font choice in its iOS app.
Apple is buying HopStop, a small company that specializes in transit directions, according to Bloomberg. Google Maps offers built-in transit directions while Apple Maps does not, so this acquisition makes perfect sense if Apple wants to makes its mapping solution more attractive.
Apple’s Developer Center is where it keeps the documentation and resources third-party developers need to make their apps. If a registered developer needs to download the latest iOS or OS X build, they go to the Dev Center. It’s an invaluable resource Apple provides for $100 per year to each person in its developer program.
When the Dev Center goes down for maintenance, it usually only lasts for a few minutes. But for some unknown reason, the Dev Center has been down for well over 24 hours. Developers are scratching their heads on Twitter, and Apple hasn’t said anything.
Some space geeks are calling today “The Day the Earth Smiled,” because the Cassini probe is set to take a picture of our planet as seen from Saturn later this afternoon. To honor this momentous occasion, the maker of astronomy software SkySafari is giving away basic versions for iOS and OS X (and discounting the Android version) through Sunday.
Even though Apple was awarded $1 billion last summer during its patent infringement case against Samsung, the two tech giants still aren’t done fighting, but there’s hope that a deal can be made as the two sides have renewed their talks to reach a settlement.
LumoPro’s LP180 flash is quite excellent. Even the Strobist himself, David “can I flash you?” Hobby said that “It’s the first flash that I actually prefer over a Nikon SB–800.” High praise indeed, as the SB–800 has been his workhorse small strobe for years.
Why is it so good? Tough, easy to use, and with some genuinely handy (and unique) features. And all for $200, which is fully $350 less than the current top-end Nikon speedlight, the SB–910.