It’s been a while since we’ve had a contest here at Cult of Mac, so let’s start the week off with a little bit of fun. We’re looking for a few talented (or not-so talented) readers to voluntarily decapitate themselves and replace their head with an iPad. It’s gruesome and beautiful at the same time, plus we’re giving away five free copies of FX Photo Studio Pro to best entries.

To win the contest all you have to do is take a self-portrait, and then overlay it onto an iPad in another portrait. You can go traditional and use your own face, or use a friends’ or celebrity’s face. Hell, you can draw a face and then overlay it on the iPad, we don’t care. Surprise or delight us and you’ll probably win.

Here’s how to enter the contest:

So, you’ve hidden a few of the apps you’ve purchased in the Mac App Store, but you want to get them back, right?

It’s ok, we understand. Sometimes you just don’t want everyone knowing what you’ve purchased. Or maybe you’re getting a little tired of seeing Mac OS X Lion in your Purchased Apps history. So you hide it.

But then you want to get it back, so you can re-download it, yeah? Well, here’s how to do just that.

After spending several years in beta testing, the popular Swype keyboard made its official debut on Android earlier this week, and at the moment it’s only available on a small number of platforms. But there’s a chance that we could see Swype’s typing technology on iOS in the future.

Swype vice president Aaron Sheedy has confirmed that his company has held talks with Apple, sparking speculation that suggests the pair are working together to develop a “revolutionary” new keyboard — possibly for Apple’s upcoming iOS 7 update.

UPDATE: Bidding just reached $505,000!

Earlier this week we wrote about a Charitybuzz auction that will get you coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. At the time, the auction had reached $5,250, but its estimated value was just under ten times that amount at $50,000.

Just a few days later, the auction has received 68 bids and reached a whopping $295,000 with 18 days still to go. It’s now Charitybuzz’s biggest ever auction.

The official IMDb app for iOS had been given a number of new features today, including a new light theme on the iPad, and the ability to look up worldwide movie release dates, actor heights, “crazy credits,” and more. The update also makes some visual tweaks, and offers bug fixes that should improve stability.

Alongside its weekly App Store refresh this week, Apple introduced a new page that helps App Store users “learn more about in-app purchases.” The guide explains what in-app purchases are, how they work, and most importantly, how to prevent your kids from spending a small fortune on them without your permission.

While smartphone have really taken off since Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007, believe it or not, traditional feature phones have remained the biggest sellers worldwide. That was until the first quarter of 2013, when smartphones out-shipped feature phones for the first time ever.

Of the 418.6 million cellphones sold during the first three months of the year, 51.6% of them were smartphones, according to new figures from IDC.

Scapple is a great new app for writers. If you were looking for an app that creates a sheet of paper on your Mac, then this is it. Scapple comes from Literature and Latte, the folks behind the amazing Scrivener, so you know that it has been designed and used by writers.

Lifehacker’s Adam ”never seen without a beanie" Dachis has come up with an ingenious solution for the gadget-laden traveler. Instead of messing around with travel chargers or any other gadget-by-gadget solution, he built a mobile charging station out of a giant portable battery and a USB hub.

Derrick Story – photographer, Macworld writer, podcasts and the man who (somewhat brilliantly) named his site The Digital Story – has just launched a new book called iPad for Digital Photographers.

The book isn’t proposing that you use you iPad to take photos, holding it up in front of you like some big dork, but that the iPad is a slim and powerful computer that should be slipped into the gear bag of anyone who takes pictures.

You don’t want to see my desk. Trust me – it’s pretty bad. In fact, you mightn’t even be able to see it, hidden as it is under a stack of junk and gadgets.

Actually, I’m kidding. I’m a neat-freak, which is why I have my eye on the Station, a bamboo desk tidy for your iPhone and all your other crap.

Critically acclaimed real time strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, has just hit the Mac App Store with a new Elite Edition, just for the Mac.

XCOM stands for Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, and the game lives up to its name, with turn-based tactical battles on a global scale, with a solid storyline and deep role playing game systems to boot. If you’re a sci-fi gamer who loved StarCraft I and II, XCOM is right up your alien-infested alley.

And now it’s finally on the Mac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoVW62mwSQQ

Now that’s pretty. Apple just posted a HD video of its new, poignant TV ad, “Photos Every Day,” on its YouTube Channel.

SpeakingPhoto is a new social photography app that lets you connect in real-time with anyone you like, using photos and recorded audio to share your special moments. Competing with Vine, Snapchat, and Digisocial, SpeakingPhoto aims to be a nicer place to be; instead of the party-atmosphere of the latter two apps, this one wants to let you record and archive the “memories, notes, and stories behind milestone moments in your personal and professional lives.”

Pretty heady stuff for a photo sharing app, right?

American McGee’s Spicy Horse Games (Akaneiro, Alice: Madness Returns) revealed its new real time strategy (RTS) digital collectible card game today, tentatively titled Hell Invaders.

Marco Arment has sold his popular read-it-later service Instapaper to Betaworks, the company that recently acquired and rebranded Digg. For years, Instapaper has been a widely-used web service and iOS app for saving links to read later in a clean layout without ads.

Don’t worry, Instapaper won’t be going anywhere. Arment and Betaworks plan to keep developing and maturing the service.

This morning, tickets went on sale for Apple’s 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference at $1,500 a piece. In a matter of two minutes the conference was sold out, and many developers were left staring at their computer screens with mouths agape.

But it looks like Apple didn’t sell all of the tickets just yet. Apple is reserving tickets and offering them to developers who were able to place their orders online.

The hardware controller for Leap Motion’s futuristic gesture tech was slated to arrive in stores on May 19th.  Now Leap Motion is having to delay its public release until July 27th. The reason for the delay is the need for more beta testing and integration with partners who will support the gesture-based platform.

In case you haven’t seen any of the demos, Leap Motion is incredibly cool. It allows you to control your Mac using Minority Report-style hand movements.  Developers have been testing and integrating Leap Motion with their apps, and the software will come with its own app store at launch.

Your heart races as you stare at your Mac’s screen, breathlessly anticipating the browser window loading another time. “If I just hit refresh again, maybe it will work,” you tell yourself. And it doesn’t. You check Twitter to see that your nerdy, developer friends can’t order tickets either.

WWDC 2013 sold out in two minutes. That’s crazy, but it’s true. You missed out.

Perhaps the above image is a more appropriate logo for this year’s WWDC, considering how many saddened devs won’t be able to attend. Apple gives third-party devs its full attention only one time of the year, and that has historically been WWDC. My colleague, John Brownlee, has already explained the reason tickets sold out so quickly. And Apple simply can’t open the conference up to more devs. Better luck next year.

Source: Louie Mantia

Mailbox may be the best email app out there, but it’s only on the iPhone. In Cult of Mac’s official review, we noted that one of the biggest cons was a lack of iPad support. Because Mailbox has such a distinct workflow for managing email, it’s difficult to use when not present on all devices.

The good news is that Mailbox is coming to the iPad. Orchestra, the developer behind the app, is working on an iPad version as we speak. Other platforms are also being looked at, including the Mac.

Ever since 2008, WWDC tickets have sold out faster and faster. In 2009, tickets to WWDC tickets sold out in a month. In 2010, it took eight days. In 2011, tickets sold out in 12 hours. Last year, they sold out in 2 hours.

This year, though? You needed to record the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it melee of WWDC ticket buying with one of those super highspeed cameras they use to show bullets blasting through fruit. 5,000 tickets to WWDC sold out in under two minutes, and even if you were there from the very first second, the sheer crush of developers trying to login to Apple’s system crashed it.

In essence, unless you got lucky and Apple’s login system didn’t barf all over you, there was simply no way to get a ticket this year.

What can Apple do about WWDC in the future to allow more people to attend? Honestly, probably not much.

Public Wi-Fi is becoming more commonplace these days, with smaller cities (like the one I live in) even adding it for the convenience of commuters and the like. But when you’re on public Wi-Fi — like at coffee shops, airports, hotels, or conferences — anybody can see what you’re doing online. If you visit sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon.com, and thousands of others, your privacy may be at risk.

In short…your privacy is gone on public Wi-Fi.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer aims to help you combat those who might try to compromise your devices while surfing public Wi-Fi with Cloak. Cloak is the antidote to hackers and hacker tools like Firesheep. With just one click…you’re safe. And thanks to this deal, you can have that safety for only $59.99.

The Amplifiear from BiteMyApple is a nifty little accessory that clips onto the corner of your iPad and boosts its sound output. It’s specifically moulded to amplify and direct the sound from your iPad’s speaker, and it promises to increase its volume by up to 10 decibels.

While the iPad’s speaker might not need amplifying in a quiet room, add background noise — such as a busy street or children playing — and it becomes hard to hear whatever it is you’re watching or playing. But by projecting your iPad’s sound towards you, the Amplifiear is designed to be “perfect for these conditions.”

The Amplifiear comes in six colors — black, white, red, green, blue, and orange — and is priced at just $24.99. Let’s find out whether it’s worth it.

Assisted Touch is an accessibility feature for iOS, usable on any iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, that recreates the hardware buttons and other gestures that someone with a motor disability might need to use. It also lets other folks use the Home, volume, screen lock, wake/sleep, and multitasking bar without using any of the hardware buttons themselves.

This can be pretty handy if you have the device in a case or holder of some type where accessing the buttons is tricky or impossible, like a home-made picture frame, for example.

Here’s how to activate this useful feature.

If you weren’t one of the lucky few that bought a WWDC 2013 ticket within the first 120 seconds they were available, then you’re probably super bummed that you’re not going to hangout with Jony Ive and the gang in San Francisco.

Don’t worry though, you can still get into the party if you’re desperate and have a few extra grand on you. Someone’s already put their WWDC ticket on eBay and the bidding starts at a cool $10,000.