You know how some ideas sound really good conceptually but end up not panning out in reality? Color was such an idea. The iPhone app received a ton of hype originally with its $41 million in venture capital funding. The premise was to create a location-based, crowd-sourced photo stream from people’s smartphone cameras that was shared publicly for everyone to see. After that idea failed, Color tried to reinvent itself into a photo sharing service by partnering with Facebook. Now the app is positioned as an internet broadcasting tool.

With recent rumors that Color Labs was considering closing its doors, a surprising report today claims that Apple is in the process of acquiring the startup.

The folks at Klout, the social network influence web company, want you to be recognized for your Klout score wherever you go. Their iOS app has added Perks and a special Passbook-enabled influence card that you can access right on your iOS device when you’re out and about.

Negative Nimbus is a cloud with a sad disposition. Why is he so sad? We’re not sure, but it might have something to do with being fairly unable to control his rain.

See, Negative Nimbus is a raincloud, and in this amazingly cute and unexpectedly creative iPad game, you’ll need to help him rain on the flowers and avoid his buddies, Ketchup Bottle, Marshmallow Roasting Hot Dog, and Apple. You’ll also get some help from Bill the Umbrella. Every time Nimbus rains on someone he’s not supposed to, he apologizes in a sad-sack Eeyore-esque voice, saying things like, “Sorry, buddies,” and “Excuse me!”

I have a problem keeping track of suggestions from friends and loved ones. Someone will recommend me an artist or TV show to check out, and I’ll forget to actually check it out shortly after. Apple’s wish list feature in iTunes is nice on the desktop, but you can’t manage or view it in iOS. I use an app called TodoMovies to track films I want to watch on the iPhone, but I’ve been longing for something more robust.

When I heard about Recall, I was intrigued. “Never forget a great recommendation again.” Ok. Sign me up. After giving it a test run, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Crumpler Nhill Heist is a laptop backpack that “allows you to step off your bike and into work, without looking like you’ve just stepped off your bike.” Built from water resistant 900D/300D rip-stop nylon, with reinforced stitching on all stress points, it aims to outlast its lifetime guarantee by being super tough.

Modern cameras include GPS data in photos, and software like iPhoto and Aperture uses this data to provide location info for features like Places. Not only are many people unaware that GPS data is included in the pics they’re taking, but uploading these pics online means that the world knows exactly when and where they were taken.

Apple’s professional photo Mac software, Aperture, is supposed to let you strip location data from your pics before you share them from the app. The problem is that the feature doesn’t exactly work in the current version of Aperture.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office just granted Apple its trademark for Passbook that was originally filed in June. After several months of internal processing on the USPTO’s end, Apple now owns the rights to Passbook and can leverage its trademark against infringing companies.

Passbook was first announced by Apple at WWDC 2012 in June and was touted as the company’s digital wallet technology. After being included in the iOS 6 betas, Passbook launched to the public with the release of iOS 6 on September 19th, 2012.

While its initial launch left much to be desired, Passbook is starting to gain traction with big franchises like Starbucks signing on. Apple has experimented with NFC-related patents, and there’s a good chance Passbook will eventually mature to be Apple’s one-stop mobile payment solution.

Source: Patently Apple

On the internet, comments can be as important as the content being articulated about. Of course, comments can also be rude, hateful, or just plain ridiculous. You know, like much of the content on the internet, as well.

So, if shared Photo Streams are like little photo social networks that contain only the people you invite, comments should never be a problem, right? Well, I don’t know about your friends and family, but mine can be both irreverent and irregular in their commenting activities. That’s why it’s handy to be able to delete comments that the original Photo Stream poster doesn’t want any more.

Here’s how to get rid of those commenting curiosities.

Apple has a reputation for having some of the best advertisements in the world. Not only does Apple know how to make unique products that consumers lust for, but they know how to sell them to people better than any company on the planet.

Over the last three decades Apple has had some incredible print ads. Some have struck the heart strings of consumers, while others were just really bad. We took a look at some of the best Apple print ads from the over the years and decided that these are 12 of the best ever.

QuickOffice Pro HD — an app which takes not only its feature-set but its naming conventions from Microsoft Office — has gotten a big, big new feature. Now you can not only edit office documents, but you can track changes and comments in DOC and DOCX files.

Lawyers, editors, authors and anyone else forced to use office on the Mac or PC can now do their work from the bar or bus, as God intended.

If we were to name our most anticipated iOS game, it would easily be Epic’s upcoming Infinty Blade: Dungeons, a spin-off of the popular franchise that takes Infinity Blade’s existing world and makes a Diablo-like action RPG out of it. Epic and Apple have been showing off Dungeons since May, and we even thought there was a good chance it would be released after the iPhone 5 keynote.

It wasn’t, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it will be released after next week’s iPad mini keynote either. In fact, it won’t even ship this year.

Logitech’s new Broadcaster webcam is just what it says it is: a webcam for live-streaming video, and for shooting podcasts. But that makes it sound boring, so how about this: The Broadcaster shoots 720p video, can connect to your Mac, iPad or iPhone via Wi-Fi and works with most of your built in (Mac) apps.

And, amazingly, there’s more:

In March Chris Pirillo showed us what happens when you put Windows 8 in the hands of someone who lacks a lot of computer savvy.  Windows 8 utterly defeated his dad. Now that Windows 8 is close to launch, Pirillo hit the streets to see how other people respond to Microsoft’s new operating system, and the results weren’t pretty.

People were mystified by the new interface and said they’d need some training on how to use it, which is never what you want from your computer, you just want it to work.

Drive is a tool for drivers who want to get basic tasks done on their phones with just a tap or a swipe, controlling your phone just as you’d control the other dashboard gadgets in your car.

By the time the new iPad Mini is announced next week I’m sure someone is going to be able to almost assemble a complete model with leaked components and supplier parts, just like they did with the iPhone 5. The latest leak to hit the Internet claims to show the screen that will be used for the iPad Mini.

Some assumed that the iPad Mini would take after the iPhone 5 and use a 16:9 ratio, but the leaked iPad Mini LCD has a 4:3 ratio and is running on a 16.7Whr battery. Here’s a peak at the screen:

Those ruggedized cases that turn your iPhone into a handy sports-cam? They can go suck it. GoPro has popped out a new sequel in its Hero lineup and it shoots 4K video whilst also being way smaller and lighter than its predecessor.

Each time Apple’s made a significant update to a device this year it’s received a significantly larger screen size or resolution. First the iPad came out with a Retina display along with the MacBook Pro, and now the iPhone 5 has a bigger display as well.

That’s great for your eyeballs, but it also means that the average size of apps is growing too, which may end up costing you more in data fees in the long run.

Some radical Orthodox Christians in Russia are starting to have a hard time with Apple’s logo that decorates every iPhone, iPad and MacBook. These Russian Orthodox believe that the half-bitten logo is anti-Christian and represents the act of original sin committed by Adam and Eve in Garden of Eden when they first bit into an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

To get past Cupertino’s symbol of evil while still using their products, many radical Orthodox, including priests, have swapped the Apple logo out for the much more “holy” image of the cross, a symbol of Jesus Christ.

The only person who cares that your old 30-pin dock doesn’t fit your new iPhone 5 is you. Everyone else is ecstatic. Apple gets to cross another SKU off its product list, and third-party makers can sniff the sweet, sweet smell of opportunity in the air. The opportunity to separate you from yet more of your easily-spent dollars.

One such opportunist is David W, the clever chap behind the Dock+, the first Kickstarter dock we’ve seen for the iPhone 5.

To vastly simplify matters, every LCD screen is made up of a bunch of pixels connected to each other with a mesh of tiny little wires. These pixels don’t actually emit light themselves, but simply regulate the color of the light being displayed in that pixel. Behind this mesh is a lamp, and before a pixel can light up on your screen, the light from this lamp needs to shine through this mesh of wires. Because this mesh is so densely packed, though, the lamp needs to shine very, very brightly to get through… and the brighter an LED light shines, the more power it soaks up.

This is why the new iPad needs such a massive battery. The Retina display has over 3 million pixels in in a tiny area, which means the mesh behind the display is even thicker and more densely packed. To compensate, Apple needs to use a very bright light to shine through this extremely dense mesh, which results in worse battery performance over all.

What if there was a way to make the mesh of wires behind every pixel a lot less dense? That’s the idea behind Sharp’s IGZO technology, and the reason why we’ve been excited about it finally coming to Apple products since at least the beginning of the year. Now it looks possible that, with the iPad mini, we could finally get our wish, as Sharp is now announcing that their IGZO tech comes in 7-inch varieties… and they are releasing a tablet to prove it.

I wasn’t expecting to laugh at a confessional song about how good one man was at Apple’s iWork and iLife suites, and how it ended up resulting in the loss of his cherished cat, Winslow. But laugh I did. Long and hard. Happy hump day, everyone.

Via: Reddit

Plain text geeks, prepare for nerdgasm: Jesse Grosjean’s Folding Text app is out of beta and in the Mac App Store. Folding Text, as you may remember, is a Markdown-compatible plain text editor with special superpowers.

The violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon makes its debut on iOS today, 15 years after it was first released — and subsequently banned for its twisted mix of automotive killing machines — on Mac and PC. It’s available to download right away from the App Store, and it’s free for today only — so grab it quick.

Invites to Apple’s iPad mini announcement went out yesterday, so it’s time speculation turned its focus to when the much-anticipated device will actually go on sale. One source claims that you’ll be able to pick it up in shops on November 2, with pre-orders starting a week earlier — on October 26 — via the Apple Online Store.

When Apple began selling the iPhone 5 on September 21, it quickly became the fastest-selling iPhone to date, with five million units sold in the first three days. However, sales have started to slow down since then, and they’ve begun falling short of analyst expectations.

It’s not that customers aren’t buying it, or that the iPhone 5 isn’t successful. The reason it’s not meeting expectations is because Apple’s manufacturing partner, Foxconn, simply can’t make it fast enough. Its design is so complicated that it’s the most difficult device Foxconn has ever built.