Apple needs a lot of tin to make its assortment of gadgets, but tin can be a very environmentally unfriendly business. It can destroy tropical forests and coral reefs, and it can bankrupt the people who depend on tropical forests and coral reefs for their livelihood. No tropical forests? No trees. No coral reefs? No fish.

Much of the tin-mining in the world is done on Bangka Island in Indonesia. Unfortunately, only some of the tin mining done there is regulated, meaning they watch out for the environmental impact. Recently, there’s been a lot of concern that Apple might actually be buying up tin from unregulated mines, taking part in the environmental destruction of the locale. That’s why Apple’s launching an investigation on the matter.

While Rovio has been pretty busy lately helping other developers launch new iOS games via its publishing company, Rovio Stars, but the Angry Birds hit marker isn’t done churning out its own titles.

This morning Rovio announced it will reveal a brand new game next Monday, July 15th. The teaser image pays homage to the very first teaser poster that was released for Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace, so it looks like the new game will be an Angry Birds version of the prequel trilogy:

Attention, Angry Birds fans! Stay tuned on Monday, July 15th, for big news about a brand new game! We’re talking the biggest character line-up ever, awesome new powers, and maybe even a few surprises!

Intrigued? Stay tuned for more news on #July15!

Source: Rovio

VimpelCom, owner of Beeline, Russia’s third-biggest mobile carrier, has cut its ties with Apple and decided it will no longer offer the iPhone. The company reportedly feels Apple’s conditions are too “harsh,” and so it has inked a deal with its biggest rival instead.

At the same Sun Valley conference where Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President Eddy Cue are prowling around looking for iTunes deals, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says that the war between Google and Apple isn’t quite so thermonuclear anymore. In fact, he says Cupertino is thawing in many respects towards the search giant.

From today, Time Inc. is allowing Newsstand users to try its digital magazines before they buy them. You’ll be able to read a handful of articles from its latest magazines in full — as well as teasers for others — before you hand over any cash.

This post is brought to you by Digiarty, creator of MacX Video Converter Pro.

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AutoFill is a boon to those of us who have a ton of forms to fill in, and these days, who doesn’t?

One of the cool new features of Safari in OS X Mavericks beta is the ability to store credit card info, so you never have to pull that card out of your wallet at work while you buy giraffe statuettes from eBay again. Ahem.

Here’s how to get the credit card info into the AutoFill feature of Safari.

Pebble has announced that its popular smartwatch has now surpassed 275,000 pre-orders, and more than 93,000 of them have been shipped since to over 150 countries since January.

The accompanying app for Android and iOS has been downloaded more than a million times, and the company has vowed to continue improving its development platform and give third-party app makers deeper access to the watch’s technology.

Best Buy is currently giving away gift cards worth a minimum of $200 to those who trade-in a second- or third-generation iPad for a new model. The offer will get you a brand new fourth-generation iPad with Retina display for as little as $299.99.

Any.Cal is the new iPhone calendar app from Any.Do, and it brings an ultra-clean UI to your iOS calendar, complete with some rather useful extras. Plus it uses the same account you already have for Any.do, which ties everything together.

Manfrotto’s new Pixi tripod is built to supports hefty compact cameras, but will be equally at home when shoved under your iPhone (via a case with a tripod screw mount, of course). In fact, it’s almost perfect for iPhoeography as it doubles as a handgrip letting you shoot much steadier video than you could with the iPhone only.

Tangent is a new iPhone app for dickering with your photos. It comes from Ben Guerrette, the brains behind Deco Sketch for the iPhone and iPad, and it is similar in intent. Tangent overlays geometrical patterns onto your photo, and then lets you adjust them.

If we’re guessing about improvments coming to the next iPhone, then a better camera is a pretty safe bet. Each iteration of the iPhone has bumped the megapixels and improved image quality, low-light performance and added featres like HDR and panoramas. Many other makers (cough Samsung cough) have attempted to match the iPhone’s camera, but only one has really come close – Nokia. And the new Lumia 1020 looks even more amazing yet.

O2, one of the U.K.’s largest cellular operators, has announced the launch of its free London Underground Wi-Fi connectivity for its mobile subscribers. Like both EE and Vodafone, O2 has entered into a partnership with Virgin Media – which has Wi-Fi hotspots at more than 120 tube stations across central London – to provide the new service to its customers.

Chair Entertainment has confirmed that Infinity Blade: Dungeons, the third installment in the Infinity Blade franchise for iOS, has officially been canned.

Fans have been looking forward to the title since it was announced last March during an Apple iPad event, but its future has looked uncertain since the studio that was developing the game, Impossible Games, was closed back in February.

Fray Fix is my favorite kind of gadget: cheap, simple, and completely single-minded. And it doesn’t even have any stupid CamelCasing or vowel movements in its name. What is it? A protector for the power cable on your MagSafe brick.

Olympus was always the company with the best gimmicks, the smallest cameras and the coolest TV ads (in the 1980s UK, at least). And that (apart from the ads) continues to this day. Almost a year ago, the company showed off the Body Cap Lens, and now it’s available to buy. As in, “buy from Amazon today.”

TeamViewer has been around at the App Store since 2010, when its first iOS app allowed users to remotely pilot a PC or Mac.

Now TeamViewer has pulled a pulled a 180; the company’s latest trick allows any Mac or PC user to remotely peer into an iPhone, iPad or an Android device equipped with their new TeamViewer QuickSupport iOS and Android apps.

Classic video game series, Worms, is getting a new installment on iOS in Q3 of this year with Worms 3 set to blast its way to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch in a couple of months.

Interestingly, Developer Team 17 has made this one as an iOS exclusive, skipping other platforms it’s been on since the first Worms came out in 1995, like the Mac, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and various handheld gaming devices.

The new game follows up the 1997 Worms 2 game, making Worms 3 a hotly anticipated title for iOS, indeed, as there have only been a bunch of add-on and experimental 3D games in the series since then.

Apple just posted a couple of tiny updates to both OS X and iOS versions of Airport Utility, bringing the Apple-branded router setup and management utility to version 6.3.1. The patch apparently fixes a bug that would keep AirPort base stations from being detected in some cases. It’s a little under 22 M to download, and can be downloaded from Apple’s support site, Software Update, and the iTunes App Store, if the iOS version is the one you need.

If you’re rockin’ OS X Mavericks beta, you’ll also see a new update for the as-yet-unreleased beta software. This should fix some sort of problem with the Recovery Mode, though the details are light at this point as to what, specifically, is being fixed. It will show up in Software Update, too.

Source: Apple Support
Via: MacNN

As if Dataman Next isn’t already superpretty and superuseful, it’s now available in a Kryptonian font. Supermen and geeks everywhere, rejoice.

Obviously, the 10-year-old Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic has stood the test of time — and then some — if we’re still playing it today (and we are, in part thanks to its recent iPad port).

Now, almost ten years to the day after its debut on the Xbox in 2003 (it debuted on the PC later that year and on OS X in 2004), both the iPad and Mac versions are on sale.

Aspyr, the publisher behind the Apple versions of the game, even scored an interesting interview with James Ohlen, the game’s lead designer.

Rovio, makers of the all-mighty Angry Birds franchise, kicked off the launch of its new publishing company last month with the new game Icebreakers: A Viking Voyage, but their second title is already here.

Tiny Thief has landed on the App Store this afternoon early reviews have been very positive. The game centers around the character Tiny Thief, an unconventional hero who uses cunning and trickery to out-smart his opponents across six epic medieval adventures.

Priced at $2.99 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, the game plays similar to the point-and-click games of yore but has its own charm and mind boggling puzzles.

Here is the trailer and release notes:

Pacific Rim doesn’t hit theaters until Friday, July 12th, but if you want to rage battle against Guillermo del Toro’s Kaiju monsters on your own the official tie-in game is now available on the App Store.

The new action fighting game gives players access to five of the weaponized robots in the movie called Jaegers, to do battle against the powerful Kaiju monsters. You can choose Story Mode to play 30 different levels that kind of follow the movie, or Survival Mode and see how many waves of Kaiju you can defeat while upgrading the tech of your Jaeger.

You can grab Pacific Rim for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch from the App Store for $5.

Here are the full release notes:

ForeverMap 2 is one of those great apps that should be a no-brainer download for any even moderately frequent map user. Unlike either the standard iOS Maps app or the Google Maps app, ForeverMap 2 can download and store custom maps on your device — allowing you to use the map and accompanying navigation features even without a wifi or data connection.

Today, ForeverMap 2 has been updated with behind-the-curtain improvements to make it much faster, and it now also includes guide information from Wikitravel. It can even route bicycle trips. Best of all, Skobbler has dropped the price from $3 to free till the end of the day.