You can turn your old Power Mac G5 into a grill for the geekiest BBQ ever. Pull out its insides and set it alight and you have a gorgeous aluminum BBQ grill.

I’m strictly a cash-only kind of guy. I like my purchases to be anonymous, I like to deprive the credit-card companies their slice of the transaction, and above all I like the feel of the greasy, germ-laden slips of paper in my fingers. ¹

However, I recognize that sometimes you just don’t have any cash. Like when you’re supposed to be splitting the dinner bill and your friend ends up paying yet again because you “don’t want to split this fifty.” Well now your sorry payment-dodging days are coming to an end, my friend. Why? Square Cash.

Before you say anything: Yes, I know this is a case for the Kindle and not for an iPad or other Apple device. But I don’t care because a) it’s super cool and should be made for the iPad mini and b) you probably own a Kindle anyway.

It’s called the Wingo, and it adds a pair of pop-out wings to your e-reader.

Good news, iOS power-nerds! TextExpander Touch 2.0 has just been released into the wilds of the App Store and is available for your keystroke-saving delectation.

The big news? Fill-In snippets finally come to iOS. But that’s not all…

After testing AirPlay speakers against Bluetooth speakers, one thing has jumped out at me: AirPlay is way, way better. In terms of sound at least. Which is why I’m interested in the Wren v5 wireless speaker, an AirPlay speaker from an ex-president at Harman International.

Known for its collectible card and board game business, Cryptozoic Entertainment put its latest creation, a free-to-play digital collectible card game named HEX, up on Kickstarter with an initial goal of $300,000.

As of today, with 17 days left to go in the full fund raising time period, the project has garnered over $970,000. That’s a pretty good pledge amount right there.

HEX is being billed as an massively multiplayer online (MMO) trading card game for Mac and PC, with the deep strategic game play of a collectible card game mashed up with the social and roleplaying aspects of an MMO, all on your Mac, with dungeons, quests, story lines, advanced AI, and–of course–beautifully illustrated card decks to collect, purchase, and use to claim dominion over your opponents.

Google announced the end of Google Checkout today, slated to go the way of Google Reader and the dinosaurs as of November 20, 2013.

Today, we’re letting web merchants know that in six months, Google Checkout will be retired as we transition to Google Wallet — a platform that enables merchants to meet the demands of a multi-screen world where consumers shop in-stores, at their desks and on their mobile devices.

It seems as this will mostly affect merchants who use Google’s Checkout system, as consumers will really only see a change in the name of the service. With Google Wallet API enhancements announced last week, like the Instant Buy API and the Wallet Objects API, the transition should be smooth for consumers who use Android to purchase goods and services.

It will mean something different to Google Checkout merchants and Android developers, however.

Yahoo just unveiled a completely redesigned website for Flickr, and it looks great. What makes it even better is that each user now gets 1 TB of free storage and 3 minutes of 1080p video.

The new look is very image-centric, as it should be. Profiles are collages of photos in a scrollable list with a Facebook-like cover photo. You can check it out now at Flickr.com.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to appear before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee tomorrow as part of a probe into tax evasion strategies among American corporations. Apple released its official testimony for the hearing earlier today, noting that is is one of the biggest taxpayers in the country.

Among the witnesses tomorrow will be Apple executives, Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, and members of the Treasury Department. “The subcommittee will spotlight Apple’s extensive tax-avoidance strategies,” according to Levin.

How loyal are you to Apple? New research shows that Apple has the most loyal and devoted customer base in the computer business.

Forrester recently conducted a survey to determine how loyal the average computer owner is to a given company. While 85% of worldwide customers don’t claim loyalty to a certain brand (defined in the above chart as “Free Radicals”), the remaining 15% have a strong allegiance to Apple.

Since it was revealed that FaceTime over Cellular was coming to iOS 6 last summer, AT&T has been gradually rolling out the feature to different segments of its subscriber base.

At first, you had to be on a “Mobile Share” plan, and then it was opened up to LTE iOS devices on a traditional tiered plan. Back in January, AT&T gave everyone access except subscribers with grandfathered unlimited plans.

Now FaceTime over Cellular on AT&T will be available to all iOS device owners, including those with unlimited data, by next month.

Alongside Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr today, the social network also released a big update to its iOS app.

External battery packs are one of the least sexy aspects of the mobile age. They’re the equivalent of the plastic gas can in the back of your trunk: stinky, unsexy, and probably empty when you need it.

Lenmar’s Helix battery pack isn’t particularly sexy, but it doesn’t smell (despite the “Undead Power” branding, which implies putrifying flesh) and it’s unlikely to be empty when you need it: it has a massive 11,000mAh battery inside, capable in theory of charging a third- or fourth-gen iPad from 0% to full. All in a battery pack not much bigger than a deck of playing cards.

When I opened iBooks on my iPad mini the other day, I tapped the Collections button, and selected “Purchased Books” as my filter option, to see what I had in my account that I wanted to read. Oddly, I saw a ton of the same book, over and over, sitting on the shelves.

For some reason, this only happens on my iPad mini. My iPhone only shows one copy of each book, even when I select the same Purchased Books option. Same with my iPad 3. But, it’s still annoying on the mini, so I went online to try and figure out what was going on.

There is a bug here that other users are seeing, as well, and there’s really only one way to “fix it.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee tomorrow morning to talk about Apple’s off-shore cash that’s now worth over $100 billion. Last week, Cook stated that his company believes the entire U.S. corporate tax system needs to be overhauled to encourage companies like Apple to bring earnings from overseas back to the U.S.

This afternoon Apple published its testimony before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that contained a wish-list for the type of comprehensive corporate tax reform it thinks would be best for the U.S. tax system. Following the company’s ethos to believe in the simple, not the complex, Apple’s tax-wish list would dramatically simplify the U.S. corporate tax system.

In its testimony, Apple states that the comprehensive reform should have the following traits:

It was just last Fall that Apple announced the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display but Apple is already facing some competition from the likes of Google’s  Chromebook Pixel and now Samsung is getting in on the game.

This morning Samsung announced that it is manufacturing a 13.3-inch display that will have higher pixel densities than both the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and the Chromebook Pixel.

Not only are Apple Stores some of the most popular retail stores on the planet, they’re also the most successful. This year Apple Stores have continued to outpace the entire industry, and as a result Apple is now making more money per visitor than ever before.

According to some analysis by Horace Dediu at Asymco, last quarter the number of Apple Store visitors grew 7%, and as a result Apple earned a record of $57.60 in revenue from each visitor.

Turkey’s tablet loving Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been going on a tour of the U.S.  in pursuit of the greatest tablet marker in the world to arm his students with. The prime minister visited Silicon Valley on May 18th to be briefed by the world’s best technology companies on their latest endeavors.

Erdoğan is looking to buy 10.6 million iPads for his country’s education new education project Faith. So far, Erdoğan was first greeted by Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, and then he paid visits to both Apple, Google.

Regarding his visit to the U.S., Erdoğan said:

There’s a lot of talk these days about Google Glass, Google’s new futuristic wearable computer that functions like a set of cyborg glasses, overlaying a HUD of Google products and search services over your life.

It certainly sounds impressive, and early reviews from the usual techno-nerds are positive. But what would Steve Jobs have thought of Google Glass?

He would have thought you were a dork for wearing one, and you needed to get laid.

Looking for an easy way to capture 360 degree video on your iPhone 4/4S when you’re out experiencing the world? Well…look no further.

Cult of Mac is offering the Dot – a product that raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter and is now in full force changing the way you see the world…one video camera at a time. We’ve got the Dot for only $27.99 for a limited time.

(Note: This promotion is available only to Continental USA customers – including shipping – and all sales are final.)

Capturing video on the iPhone is a regular use case, and now thanks to the Dot from Kogeto you can take amazingly awesome 360 degree video with the click of a button. It’s that simple. Not only is the video quality great, but the interactive 360 views are unreal.

Here are the highlights of the Dot:

Apple is well-known for its love of the so-called golden ratio, an “extreme and mean” mathematical ratio that designers as far back as the third-century B.C. identified as most likely to lead to harmonious design. The iCloud logo, for example, is designed with the golden ratio in mind … and it’s widely believed that the iconic Apple logo is also designed using the golden ratio.

It’s a nice thought, isn’t it? That Apple’s logo is constructed out of mathematically perfect circles and partial circles? Unfortunately, not only is it not true, but Apple has different logos it uses even in its own official materials: the Apple icon etched into the back of your iPad is very different than, say, the official  Unicode symbol.

If you jailbreak your iOS devices, there usually comes a point where you get stuck on an older firmware because the latest one hasn’t yet been hacked by the jailbreak community. When this time comes, it’s almost impossible to restore your device and start with a clean OS without losing your jailbreak.

But not anymore. A new app called Semi-Restore provides you with a clean install of your current firmware without updating your device and killing your jailbreak.

A fifteen year old boy has been gruesomely killed in Las Vegas while being robbed for his iPad.

Apple doesn’t like OLED displays. Across the board, Apple uses LCD IPS displays in its devices, which have better color accuracy than OLED. Theoretically, though, OLED is better than LCD when it comes to power consumption, though… which is why a new report is floating the possibility that Apple might switch to OLED for the iWatch… and that Foxconn is already building test runs.

Apple’s fifth-generation iPad, which is set to feature an all-new design much like the iPad mini’s, will enter production in July ahead of its September release, according to supply chain sources. Trial production of the device will reportedly begin soon and will ramp up to 2-3 million units this fall.