Let’s be honest: you think you’re an Instagram aficionado. You know the rule of thirds. You know how to use tilt-shift to perfectly accentuate that leaf. Your shots of coffee shops balance lights and darks perfectly. You can capture the magic of a beautiful sunset unlike any other (X-pro II, am I right?).

To get to the next level of your Instagramming career, you need to start getting your photos out there for the world to see. If the popular page won’t give you love, consider slapping a Creative Commons license on your pics.

The jury in the Apple-Samsung trial continues its deliberations for a third straight day and there are rumors it will reach a quick verdict resolution before the weekend. But you can forget it. The official jury verdict form is forcing the jurors to consider 773 individual infringement claims at issue.

Microsoft recently redesigned its company logo for the first time in 25 years. The design is dead simple: four boxes in a square that pays homage to the original logo.

What would it look like if Microsoft redesigned Apple’s logo? The above concept comes from L8. Logos have also been made for brands like Starbucks, Firefox, Twitter, Pepsi, and Google.

I think it’s safe to say that Apple’s own logo wins.

Source: L8

Thanks: Andrew

VMWare announced the newest version of VMWare Fusion, its Mac virtualization product, this week. In doing so it also launched its first business or enterprise version of the popular tool for running Windows and other operating systems on Mac workstations. Dubbed Fusion Professional, the new solution has a range of features that are likely to appeal to IT professionals in both business and education.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 launch event happened in New York City last night, and celebs like Sports Illustrated covergirl Kate Upton were in attendance. Given Samsung’s high-profile legal feud with Apple, it’s particularly unfortunate that a shot of the beautiful Upton depicts her sitting next to her white iPhone.

You’d think that Samsung would have the due diligence to at least give its paid guests appropriately-branded phones. Oh well, at least it gave us an excuse to post it on Cult of Mac.

Here’s another one of those “so simple it hurts” tips that we find from time to time, leaving us scratching our heads, wondering why we didn’t figure it out sooner.

When you’re browsing the web, whether you’re on a computer or your iPhone, you don’t always want to open links in the window you’re browsing in. Neither do you always want to open them in a new tab in the foreground. Sometimes, especially when you’re doing internet research, you want to open tabs in the background. On the Mac, it’s simply a matter of Command clicking a link in your current browser, or setting a preference or two for your favorite web apps.

You can do this on iOS, too, with a simple tap in Settings. Here’s how.

Now that OS X 10.8.1 is here, has battery life really improved, as rumored? The Mac Observer did some tests, and the answer is… sometimes?

Evernote has become an indispensible tool for people all over the world. The incredibly versatile “save anything” tool is used at home, school, and work. One nagging issue has been that although Evernote is an amazing productivity tool and has tons of business applications, it has never been good at sharing on a large scale – like the level of sharing that a business of a few dozen people or a few thousand people needs.

All that is about to change. The company announced a new workplace edition of Evernote for business customers.

Since I’m so excited, we’re going to front load this review: if you don’t want to sign a contract to have an iPhone, Straight Talk is the best prepaid carrier you can possibly choose in the United States. And even if you have no problem with signing a two year contract with one of the big three, you should seriously consider Straight Talk: you get the same quality of coverage and network speeds as if you signed up with AT&T for hundreds of dollars less.

Got that? Now let me elaborate.

Farewell Nikon D700. You were one of the best digital cameras ever made.

The D700, the full-frame DSLR Nikon launched way back in 2008, has just had its life support switched off, and the doctors have pulled the sheet over its face and closed the curtain around its bed.

Four years isn’t bad in today’s world, and those wanting a non-top-end full-frame body can buy the D800, but that’s more about video and show-off (36MP) pixel-counts. Here, I’ll say it: the D700 was maybe the best photographers’ camera ever.

This image claiming that Microsoft ripped off its new logo from Apple is pretty funny, but is its creator, Andrew Brett Watson, really being fair? Check it out in full below:

Tim Cook has been very busy running Apple the past 12 months. There have been a lot of changes and new products that have helped make Apple the most valuable company ever. There have also been a lot of controversies, and headaches along the way. The road hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but we think Tim has done a great job in his first year as CEO of Apple.

Here are eight things that have kept Tim busy in his first year as CEO:

Last week I was in the tobacconist buying some Cuban cigars, and the girl in front of me was tattooed with an Apple logo. I got a crappy picture, but I snapped it out of horror rather than admiration.

Still, a tat is one thing. An Asymco T-Shirt, featuring a graph of, say, Apple’s increasing stock price, is another. These things are so dorky that they come out the other side being awesome.

I love these WordPress theme deals. Why? Well, because I’m a theme junkie. Even if I don’t get a particular theme deal, I love knowing about and checking out the various WP theme foundries that are out there. Always good to have a few smaller foundries in your back pocket, IMHO.

Today we have a deal for Themify. Nice themes. Good styles. Nice layouts. And my favorite option: they support Child theming. Why is this important? Well, let me tell you…

Bluetooth speakers? Count me in. I love the things: portable, great-sounding, remote control right there on the speaker, and wireless. But Bluetooth headphones? Aren’t they bulky, and with crappy battery life? Not, apparently, the new Satchi BT Lite headphones, which – as the name suggests – are pretty “lite.”

Samsung may have been treated unfairly when the trial’s magistrate Judge refused to admit new evidence into the case late in the game despite the fact it had allowed Apple to order an earlier sanction against it, a prominent law blog is reporting.

A post in Groklaw.net says Samsung may build a case around the issue of unfairness in an attempt to throw out the verdict if the jury goes against it.

Today marks the first anniversary of Tim Cook as CEO of the world’s biggest company, but what has really changed under the soft-spoken, shy-seeming Alabaman?

Virtually everything. Tim Cook has given Apple what Steve Jobs never could: a conscience.

What use could you possibly have for a washable keyboard? The obvious hand-shandy jokes write themselves here, but there are other reasons that you might want this easy-clean keyboard from Logitech.

While we’re almost certain Apple is working on its own television set, when it will launch is a complete mystery. Initially it seemed the set could make its debut before the end of 2012, and then reports pushed the release date back until 2013. Now according to a new analyst report, it’s unlikely won’t be adding an Apple HDTV to your credit card bill any time soon.

Why? Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue has reportedly indicated to analysts that there’s still a lot of work to be done with content providers.

In a somewhat ironic move, the U.S. government has entered into an ebook deal with Apple that will see a range of government reports, documents, and ebooks published in Apple’s iBookstore. The partnership, which was announced earlier this week, coincides with the Department of Justice’s latest legal filings in its anti-trust suit against Apple.

The deal with the Government Printing Office (GPO) will make a wide swath of documents and ebooks available through the iBookstore. While some government documents are available for free, a number of documents and full-length ebooks are not.

We love Readdle’s productivity apps here at Cult of Mac, especially when they’re going cheap. The company is currently holding a Back to School campaign that sees a number of iOS apps that “are indispensable for studying” reduced. Those included are ReaddleDocs for iPhone, ReaddleDocs for iPad, and Remarks.

Snapping a screenshot on your Apple device is dead easy: home-plus-sleep-button for iOS, and Command-Shift-4 (or others) for the Mac. But what about snapping a sound-shot, i.e. grabbing a snippet of your system audio?

Well, you could fire up Quicktime and start dickering around with that. Or you could install WavTap and then hit Command-Control-Space.

It’s been a rocking year for Tim Cook, his first as Apple’s CEO. Not only did he not fuck up; Apple shipped a bunch of hit products and became the biggest company ever.

He also defused a big crisis in Apple’s Chinese supply chain and has made Apple a little more open and relaxed (just a teeny bit).

Hit the jump for a great timeline of what Apple’s been up to under Tim Cook’s tenure. (Really, it’s a fascinating timeline and was a ton of work.)

Just as we had predicted, the iPhone mod that aims to turn your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S into an iPhone 5 — which we told you about yesterday — has been pulled by Apple. The site selling the kit has received a letter from a third-party who is “authorized to send notice and takedowns on behalf of Apple,” and it will stop selling in 48 hours.

What’s the single standout feature that makes you want to buy Fujifilm’s retro-tastic X-series cameras? It’s that neat hybrid viewfinder, right? That’s the real innovation, and the real difference not only between the X cameras and your screen-only iPhone, but between the X-series and all mirrorless cameras.

Which brings us to leaked news of the forthcoming X-E1, a new budget-friendly X-series body which trims the cost by… ditching that viewfinder.