July 1st has come and gone, and Google Reader is dead. The beloved RSS aggregator has been an invaluable tool for legions of news junkies throughout the years, but it wasn’t popular enough for Google to keep it running.
You can look at Google Reader’s death two ways: as either a misfortune, or an opportunity.
In the wake of Reader’s demise, numerous RSS platforms have sprung up, and many of them have built upon what made Reader great. Enter Feedly.
Apple is starting to give more attention to the Apple TV, as the recent additions of content like HBO Go and WatchESPN prove. Negotiations to stream cable content via the Apple TV have been underway, and Apple is almost ready to close a deal with Time Warner Cable. Former Hulu executive Pete Distad has also been hired by Apple to handle negotiations with content companies for the Apple TV, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
Apple has released an important security update via the Mac App Store for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users. It’s important to install these updates right when they come out to keep your Mac up to date with the latest bug fixes and malware patches.
You can download the update now in the Mac App Store or download them manually from Apple’s website.
Source: Apple
Rovio, makers of the all-mighty Angry Birds franchise, kicked off the launch of its new publishing company last month with its first game Icebreakers: A Viking Voyage hitting the App Store last month, but the company already has a new game on deck.
Earlier this morning Rovio announced that its second game, Tiny Thief, will be hitting iOS and Android next week. Details on the new game are pretty scant, but Rovio says its a stealth-based puzzle-solving game.
Based on the trailers it looks like you’ll be trying to steal hidden items by covertly creating a chain of events to open up the map for ultimate thievery.
Here’s the latest Tiny Thief trailer:
File this one under super cool! In previous incarnations of iOS, you’ve always been able to set a photo from your camera roll as the image that shows up on your iPhone or iPad screen. You can place one image on your lock screen, and one as your wallpaper, or the same image on both screens.
Now, however, in iOS 7 beta, you can actually set panoramas as your lock screen image, or as your wallpaper image. Or both! When you do so, the iPhone or iPad will show your panoramic image in full size, which lets you move the device around in a circle and see the whole image dynamically move across your screen.
Here’s how to make this happen.
Long distance flights have never been more bearable thanks to the invention of the iPad. Now you can just you melt into a five hour Kindgom Rush spree while the guy next to you snores deep into his peanut induced slumber, and if you want to do it all hands free, Griffin’s got a new iPad mount that’d be perfect for you.
If you’ve been looking for a way to keep your passwords and information secure, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is going to end your search. mSecure for Mac is the ultimate bodyguard for securing your accounts and passwords – and it can be yours for only $11.99 during this limited time offer.
Not only will your information be impenetrable, but mSecure is capable of generating “unguessable” and “unhackable” passwords so you can have top-notch protection.
While the U.S. market has been the biggest measure for success with handset makers over the last few years, all of that may soon change as the U.S. smartphone market quickly gets dwarfed by China and others.
According to a new report from ABI Research, China will displace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market by the end of 2013, but just five years later both India and Brazil will pass the U.S. too:
Southwest Airlines announced today that it has partnered with DISH to offer free in-flight TV on all of its Wifi equipped planes. The free tv service launches today and is available to fliers with an iPad, iPhone, or almost any other smartphone or tablet.
With so much success on Kickstarter, the Pebble smartwatch hasn’t been easy to get hold of if you weren’t an early backer. But you’ll soon be able to pick one up at Best Buy. The retailer just added the device to its website with a $150 price tag, though it doesn’t yet have a release date.
Spotify for iOS has been updated today to finally bring the Discover feature to the iPhone, which was first made available to everyone back in May. The version 0.7.1 update also adds the ability to edit your playlists, introduces a new home screen icon, and a new Now Playing view.
The MacBook Air is a hell of a machine, a computer that created an entirely new class in the PC market. No wonder it’s absolutely dominating sales, with 56% of all ultrabooks sold being — surprise! — MacBook Airs.
Reeder for iPhone, one of the best Google Reader clients on iOS, just got a new update that introduces support for Feedly and Feed Wrangler. The release comes just a day after Google Reader reached its end, and you can expect the same for Reeder for iPad, and Reeder for Mac in the coming weeks.
It used to be that if you wanted to increase the size of your mouse pointer, you’d hop into the Universal Access pane in the System Preferences and then click on the Mouse & Trackpad tab to find the Increase Cursor Size slider.
With OS X Mavericks beta, if you go looking for the Universal Access preferences pane, you’re out of luck. It’s called Accessibility now. However, if you know that much, and drop into it, you won’t find a Mouse & Trackpad tab.
So, in OS X Mavericks beta, if you want to increase the size of your mouse pointer, here’s what you have to do.
Opera 15, the first Opera browser powered by Google’s Chromium engine, is now available to download on your Mac. In addition to a “fresh new look,” it comes with a new Speed Dial page that provides one-click access to your favorite sites, plus a feature called Discover that offers a range of content you might be interested in.
Quick quiz – How do you hold your iPhone when you’re taking video? And when you’re shooting photos? If your answer is “Uhhhh…. Depends? I don’t know…” then you are just like me. I never quite know which way up it is, or whether my finger is on the shutter release (volume switch), or whether the app I’m using even lets me use the volume switch to take a picture (cough Instagram cough).
The ShoulderPod is designed to fix that, adding a stand and a fat grip to the iPhone.
Capsule is another “save your place” app, where by “place” I mean “actual location” and not your current page in a book. This one has a beautiful UI and ties in with Foursquare’s database to let you search and pinpoint locations quickly.
You just know Al Gore is going to order up three of these bad boys and hook them up to his new trashcan Mac Pro – just for checking the weather reports (spoiler – getting warmer). And the good news is that you can too: these 31.5-inch 4K displays from Asus are now available for pre-order at the low, low (?) price of $3,500. A shame. If Asus had added another $500 to the price my headline could have been “4K Monitor For $4K.”
After last week’s Mac update, Skitch for iOS has gotten the same neat new features. Now you can use the new arrows, add white space around pictures for clearer notes, and enjoy the new smallness of smaller shapes.
Incredimail, the new mail client for iPad that’s been attracting a lot of attention since its launch, just got another new update adding some nice new features. In addition to the ability to share links and photos on Facebook, the update adds pinch to zoom, enhanced archiving, and improved personal signatures.
TeeVee 2 is a great iPhone app that tells you when your favorite TV shows are airing. I’ve tried a bunch of these apps in the past, and TeeVee wins out for a couple of reasons – it’s fast, it’s simple and it looks gorgeous.
You can read about the full spec rundown of the new Canon 70D SLR elsewhere (DP Review is a good bet). Here we’ll just take a look at the big (and it is big) new feature – the fancy video-friendly autofocus.
Apple has today kicked off its annual Back to School promotion through the Apple online store. As it did in 2012, the Cupertino company is offering a $100 App Store gift card with every new Mac, or a $50 card with a new iPad.
This year’s promotion also includes the iPhone, which now comes with a $50 gift card, too.
In order to supply power to its new data center in Reno, Nevada, Apple plans to build a solar array in collaboration with NV Energy, a Nevada utility company. The energy farm should power the data center as well as the surrounding community, says Apple.
This new solar plant is right in line with Apple’s efforts to use as much renewable energy as possible in its facilities. The site in Cork, Ireland is powered by wind and sites in Elk Grove, California as well as Austin are completely powered by green energy as well, which is pretty darn cool.
According to its investor’s page, Apple, Inc. will conference call with investors on July 23, 2013, discussing its financial performance for the fiscal third quarter of 2013, which ended June 30.
The call will be live streamed on Apple’s web page for anyone to listen in, and should cover revenue and sales figures. We can expect to hear from Tim Cook, CEO, and probably Peter Oppenheimer, CFO of Apple, both explaining the current performance as well as making some sort of financial forecast for the coming quarter, Q4 2013.