Holograms are supposedly going to be the future of artistic performance. First there was the Tupac hologram at Coachella, and now Eazy-E and Ol’ Dirty Bastard are making a hologram comeback too.

Tim Cook had to endure a barrage of silly questions at yesterday’s Senate hearing, but the most most absurd and tasteless came from none other than TMZ who was dying to know if Steve Jobs will make an appearance as a hologram at the next Apple event.

Rather than slapping the reporter for being ridiculous, Tim Cook used his southern charm to deflect the question. Heres a video of the awkward encounter: 

If you’re active you know how many pairs of headphones you can blow through in a given year, so a nice extra set is always needed. This Cult of Mac Deals offer has just what you’re looking for – and at price you’re looking for as well.

These headphones combine high quality sound output with scientifically developed sound isolation that creates a music listening experience you won’t be disappointed with – especially for just $15.

This is interesting: along with their new redesign, in Germany, Apple has made it possible to pay for products ordered from their online store using PayPal.

In Germany, it is very rare for consumers to have credit cards, or even for brick-and-mortar businesses to take credit card orders. Allowing German consumers to pay for purchases with PayPal may make the Apple online store more accessible to them, or it could be the first sign of a global agreement between Apple and PayPal as another available payment option for consumers.

Nice spot by Macerkopf.

Source: Apple Store

Here’s something for you: a bendable but still rigid Lightning-to-USB cable that can function not just as a charging and sync cable for your iPhone, but also as a make-shift stand, propping up your device on a coffee table, desk or even when it’s in a wall charger. $19.95. None too shabby.

Google has brought the new voice search features announced at Google I/O last week to its Google Chrome web browser for desktops. The latest version of the app (version 27) puts a little microphone icon alongside the search bar on Google.com which lets you find the things you’re looking for without touching your keyboard.

During his appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple’s “Made-in-USA” Macs will be manufactured in Texas. The Cupertino company announced its plans to produce one of its Mac lines on U.S. soil last December, but until now, it was unclear where the process would take place.

Everyone knows Aspyr Media for their numerous Mac ports of classic PC games like, for example, Bioware’s incredible Star Wars RPG, Knights Of The Old Republic. Now it looks like Aspyr could be bringing KOTOR to the iPad.

One of Intel’s biggest mistakes in the last decade was being blind-sided by the rise of mobile devices. Intel should have seen it coming: Apple asked Intel to make chips for the original iPhone, only to be turned down. Simultaneously, Cupertino was pressuring Intel to get the power-management of their chips under control. It’s not too far-fetched to say that if Intel had been paying attention to all the signals, then today they could be as dominant in mobile chips as they are in PCs and servers.

But Intel under former CEO Paul Otellini turned a blind-eye to mobile until it was too late. It’s a mistake new Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is determined not to repeat, which is why he has created a brand new “New Devices” division within Intel to focus on emerging trends, including “ultra-mobile devices.”

What’s an ultra-mobile device? Think wearable computing, like Google Glass or the iWatch.

You may assume that there’s little use for a fragile smartphone on the battlefield, but you’d be completely wrong. The Inteliscope is a new iPhone accessory unlike anything you’ve ever seen before that turns your device into an intelligent scope for your rifle.

No, not a toy rifle. A real rifle.

I’m a long time Risk player, with a penchant for grabbing up Australia or South America first, then blockading the heck out of them while I focus my expansion to the rest of the map from these well-fortified positions.

While there is a fantastic Risk game for the iPhone, there’s not one for the Mac, let alone one that plays on both platforms. Checking out Conquist 2, then, a Risk-style conquer the world game, seems like a no brainer, since you can purchase it for Mac and/or iOS, making it the perfect cross platform multiplayer game for fans of Risk.

Check it out.

Apple began adding the Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent-infringement case against Samsung last week, and it has now specified five patents which it believes the device is breaching. The Cupertino company has also taken aim at Google Now, which allegedly infringes its unified search patent.

The Apple online store went down for just over four hours earlier today, and it came back with Apple’s new Father’s Day promotion and a few noticeable design changes.

The Cupertino company is again heavily promoting the iPad and the iPad mini, but the iPhone 5 also gets a lot of room on the store’s homepage.

Apparently the OLPC cemented the colors green and white as the color scheme of choice for the education market, because now the new Logitech Wired Keyboard for iPad is similarly hued.

I have no problem with that: the combo is so ugly that it’ll seriously diminish the resale value should light-fingered pupils decide to earn a little extra pocket money.

Two new iPad mini keyboard cases from Zagg today: A super-thin magnetic cover and a thicker stick-on “folio” case, similar to the Pro Plus case for the regular-sized iPad only with a top cover too. And both, amazingly, are backlit.

Wallets: I hate them, but having loose coins in your pocket which fall out every time you sit down is worse. Especially in a country where the coins are actually worth something. Right now I have a typically over-engineered German wallet which will probably last me forever, but I like the look of SF Bags’ new Finn. It’s flat, it holds cash and cars and – if you pick the bigger model – it also has space for your iPhone.

PhotoExif is an app that lets you add EXIF data to photos shot with a film camera. You can dial in aperture, shutter speed, focus distance and focal length, along with notes about your photo, and when you get the photos back, freshly scanned from the lab, you can add the info to the digital images.

Haunting Melissa is a horror "movie" which is dripped into your real, everyday life by your iPad or your iPhone. Instead of sitting down for an hour and a half and watching the story unfold, the story comes in episodes.

The twist is that the snippets are delivered at unexpected times, and you’re told about them through push notifications sent to your iDevice.

I quite like the dark linen texture that sits behind the elements of the iOS (and recently OS X) interface, but I’m pretty sure that Jony Ive’s upcoming Great Purge will consign it to the same tomb as brushed aluminum – after all, this is a designer so minimalist that he even removed a superfluous “n” from his own name.

So this wraparound case from Plus Motif might be my last chance at linen.

Ok, so if you’ve been paying attention to the gaming space today, you’ll know that Microsoft unveiled its new gaming console, the Xbox One. This next generation console is going to play video games, control your TV (sort of), and act as a DVD/Blue-Ray player. It’s got a Kinect motion sensor box on top, which can not be disconnected, and the console won’t play Xbox 360 discs.

This is all well and good, and represents a step forward in Microsoft’s quest to own the living room, even though a lot of us don’t have the time, space, or extra cash to spend on a huge entertainment hub these days, anyway. That’s really not what bothers me, though.

The Xbox One is just uglier than anything I could have imagined.

Heck, my ten year-old son, not a maven of design in any way, saw pictures of the new Xbox, and chuckled. “Why is it bigger than the Xbox 360?” he asked. “It looks the same, just more square.”

Which really made it all hit home for me: design matters. The case design of the Xbox One is firmly rooted in the past. Which makes a lot of sense if you consider the reveal today, full of the same games and the same brands with better graphics.

Walmart’s video on demand service, Vudu, just rolled out a new update for its iOS app. Version 2.0 of Vudu now lets you download videos from the service, and then watch them even if you’re offline. The player itself is streamlined, and Closed Captioning–already supported on the iPad version of the Vudu app–is now available on the iPhone, too.

Badger is a new jailbreak tweak that lets you access unread notifications from an app icon. Instead of opening Notification Center, swiping on a specific icon can reveal a list of notifications. From there, you can clear individual messages and even respond to texts.

Apple has published the opening statements read by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer earlier today at the U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing on corporate taxes. The hearing lasted several hours and was televised live on CSPAN.

Senators like Carl Levin, John McCain, and Rand Paul were present to lead the committee and hear from industry experts. Apple was called to the stand to explain why it stores a large percentage of its billions in cash overseas.

Today Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One at its Redmond, Washington campus. As the battle for the living room rages on, Microsoft has won a decisive victory that puts it well ahead of the competition.

The Xbox One is just as much for all-around entertainment as it is for gaming, perhaps even more so. It’s designed to be the one box that sits below your TV and does everything: games, movies, live TV, music, surfing the web, messaging, and even video calling. Minority Report-style gestures control the experience, it can recognize your face when you walk in the room, and you can talk to it like Siri on steroids.

Should Apple be worried? The answer is no, at least not yet.

Intel lost the opportunity to power the iPhone, but the company is hard at work to make sure they don’t get completely shut out of mobile hardware, and to do so they’re hiring some old Apple talent.

To lead the charge in its plans to build “smart devices” Intel has hired former Apple Vice President, Mike Bell, to head up Intel’s new Smart Devices Unit.

iBooks is not only a fantastic e-reading app on your iPhone or iPad, but it’s also a fantastic study tool. If you need to read books for class or your own learning objectives, you can use iBooks to highlight words or passages, search the text for specific words or phrases, and make notes that appear in the margins as little colored sticky notes.

Using these tools could help you become a much more organized studier, letting you go back to a passage in a book to remember the important things with a couple of taps. Here’s how, using iBooks 3.1, the latest version of iBooks.