Among modern addictions, the one to iOS photo apps appears to be gaining purchase in the global culture. Facebook, Flickr and all manner of photo sharing services across the Internet are rife with the evidence, as is the success of web-based standalone services such as Instagram and Hipstamatic.

So, if you’re inclined to think of your iPhone or iPad as a palette for creativity, consider FX Photo Studio for the full-on rush its beautifully executed UI and finely detailed features bring to your artistic toolbox.

This 99¢ app ($2.99 for the iPad version) from the developers at MacPhun packs nearly 200 different effects and filters into a robust processing engine that will amaze you with its ability to enhance your photographs in ways limited only by your own imagination.

We start another week of deals with a number of Mac Pro Xeon workstations. The units from the Apple Store start at $2,039 for a Quad Core Xeon 2.66GHz. Next is a leather flip stand for the iPad. (We also include several other iPad cases.) Finally, there is a deal on Apple’s Final Cut Studio 3, which bundles Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Compressor 3.5, DVD Studio 4, and Color 1.5 — all for $709.

Along the way, we all take a peek at several software titles, ranging from Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 to the backup and synchronization tool Sync Pro 6.

As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Forget those china plates, iPad and iPhone apps are the new must-haves for people who want to follow the fairy tale wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William.

To makes sure there is as much interest as possible on April 29, broadcasters and publishers are crowding the iTunes store with dozens of apps, many of them free, aimed at filling the teacups of royal watchers the world over to brimming.

Among them are the Royal Wedding Insider from BBC America (with an unfortunate ad for The Tudors miniseries in it), The Royal Wedding from Hello! Magazine as well as offerings from NBC , one from People that allows you to print your own commemorative stamp and a virtual tea towel app.

Though they’ll probably never surpass the interest in the Kate Middleton doll with its big head or the fun factor in commemorative condoms, unlike ceramics (which more or less live forever) you can dump these apps guilt-free as your interest wanes post-nuptials.

Let’s face facts: worrying about someone dropping a twelve pound bowling ball on your new iPad 2 is probably as paranoid as, say, worrying about it being trampled by an elephant driven insane by the winter’s musth.

Still, if you must worry about such things, or other high impact calamities that could happen to your iPad — like a 747 smashing into it as it plummets out of the sky, or a narcoleptic parachuter face planting upon your tablet after sleeping through his ripcord count — it looks like you might want the G-Form Extreme Sleeve.

Made of something called “PORON® XRD™,” the G-Form works by turning rigid upon impact, protecting the iPad from being smashed into smithereens. As you can see, it works quite well, and it’s not even that expensive at $59.95.

The new Fusion case for the iPhone 4 from Nelson Technologies is the thinnest, lightest, and the longest running rechargeable battery case currently on the market, promising up to an extra 42 hours of audio, 11 extra hours of video, and 2 extra days of runtime.

Despite its low profile design – which adds less than an inch in total width or depth and weighs less that 2.4 ounces – the Fusion also claims to be robust and protects your device from ordinary wear and tear.

The case features a 1,500 mAh lithium polymer SaFPWR smart battery that’s rechargeable for over 500 cycles and increases iPhone runtime by more than 200%. Intelligent built-in technology ensures your iPhone never short-circuits, overcharges, or over-discharges.

Blowing into them isn’t going to do a lick of good, but if you’re a fan of retro gaming, these gorgeous iPhone 4 cases have been designed to look exactly like the backsides of retro Famicom and NES cartridges, replete with emphatic warnings about taking your copy of Zelda into the bathtub with you, or trying to clean the contacts by licking them out. These beauties aren’t cheap, though: each one will cost you nearly $57.

Apple’s AirPlay system is an exclusive club. If you want to be part of it, you pay Apple a licensing fee to get “Made for AirPlay” certification, at which point Apple sends you a private key that allows your hardware to broadcast itself as ready for streaming. Technically, there’s no whiz-bang hardware at play here: just a private key that Apple keeps close.

Developer James Laird just ripped that key from Apple’s clutch. Frustrated by the lack of open-source Airport Express and/or AirPlay emulators out there, Laird has just released his own home-baked emulator, called SharePort.

SharePort allows you to stream music from iTunes to third-party software or AirPlay certified hardware. Previously, you could stream iTunes to an Airport Express, or use third party software to stream to an Airport Express, but now you can use iTunes to stream directly to 3rd party software or hardware.

Last week we reported on an issue plaguing owners of the 3G iPad 2 hooked up to the Verizon network. A growing number of users have reported a problem with their device that means they have to reboot their iPad to reactivate their 3G data connection. On Friday, Apple issued an official statement to All Things Digital, acknowledging the problem and reassuring users that they are investigating the issue:

We are aware that a small number of iPad 2 customers have experienced connectivity issues with the Verizon 3G network and we are investigating it.

A thread on the Apple Support Discussions forum now spans 9 pages long and is full of reports from disgruntled Verizon customers who are having problems with their iPad 2. The issues begins when 3G is turned off from within the settings app. When it’s turned back on, the data connection does not restore, simply displaying a “Searching…” message where the carrier’s name should be.

The only fix at the moment is to reboot the device while 3G is set to ‘on’ – this restores the data connection upon reboot. It’s likely a fix for this problem will come in a minor iOS software update shortly.

[via InfoWorld]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTuniZZA1VY

A new iPhone application called Friends Aloud from VoiZapp uses state of the art text-to-speech technology to read aloud your Facebook news feed. It cycles through your friends’ status updates, as well as the associated comments, and reads them out in a pleasant, easy to understand voice.

For Facebook addicts Friends Aloud allows you to peel your eyes away from your iPhone or computer screen but remain up to date. Leave your device in your bag, pocket, or on your desk, and carry on with your day while you listen to everything that’s happening on Facebook.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Offering that imitation as a parody allows commentary while avoiding the Wrath of Legal. Spoofs of Apple commercials are certainly not a new phenomenon, but recently we’ve moved past Get A Mac and Dancing Silhouettes into the Jony Ive Era: soft music, featherlight products and dark T-shirts.

The world’s creative types have noticed, producing a stream of variations on Apple’s ubiquitous advertising. SlateV uses Ive himself to introduce one of Apple’s greatest technological wonders, the iPhone 4 Bumper.

The hiring of a Senior Composites Engineer at Apple has fuelled more speculation that the company could move away from aluminum for building future devices, choosing to use carbon fiber instead. Kevin Kenny began work at the Cupertino campus this month after spending 14 years building carbon fiber bicycles for Kestral Bicycles, where he was the President and CEO.

This isn’t the first time Kenny has worked with Apple; a patent called “Reinforced Device Housing” filed by the company in 2009 had Kenny’s name on it, and depicted an outer casing for electronic devices made from ultra-strong carbon fiber. The patent reveals Kenny was clearly working with Apple for a long time before he became a full-time employee.

The iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad have already made Apple a huge player when it comes to gaming, with the touchscreen devices proving to be stiff competition for handheld consoles such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. However, two faces headed to the Apple camp would suggest the Cupertino company wants to get even more serious about gaming.

Simon & Schuster announced on Sunday that the authorized biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been scheduled for an early 2012 release. The book entitled iSteve: The Book of Jobs is being written by Walter Isaacson, who has been working on the biography since 2009 and has enjoyed rare and exclusive interviews with Jobs, members of his family, and his colleagues at Apple.

As a parent, it is always important to keep tabs on what your children are doing on the computer. Whether it’s the sites they are visiting, the amount of time they spend online, or even what applications they are using, Mac OS X can cover it. OS X includes a set of parental controls that can be tweaked to anyone’s liking. In this video, you will see how to set up parental controls and use the features that work best for you.

When the clocks go forwards or back, people from New Zealand to New York miss their appointments because their iPhone alarm does not go off on time. Every time I complete a 10km run using my iPod nano, TIger Woods congratulates me on having completed another 500km. And as you read this, thousands of backups are failing because Time Machines are freezing in time.

What do these seemingly disparate events having in common? They’re all presumably the handiwork of Apple’s “B-team”.

[Update] Thanks to everyone who subscribed and commented, tons of really great comments, I had a fun time reading them all! The two winners are below, if you’re one of them, I’ll be contacting you via Youtube. Stay tuned for another great giveaway next Tuesday!

Winners:

• AGreatDane123, against all odds, you got the first qualified comment in. I applaud you sir, you are a winner. Congrats!
• Anthonypeter, it is for pity that I choose you, for no one should go through life not having won anything. Congrats!

Still rollerskating around in your short-shorts with tunes blaring on the headphones that came with your original Walkman? Tsk tsk… Everyone knows that’s a look that won’t be hip again for at least another 5 years.

It’s no secret that the iPad 2 should open the floodgates of the augmented reality experience — and here’s another example of what the iPad 2 can do with AR.

No doubt in anticipation of Yuri’s Night, Vito Technology has just released an AR-equipped version of their venerable star-watching iPad app, Star Walk ($5). Just hold the screen up to the sky and the app will superimpose constellations and all sorts of other info onto a realtime image of the sky being viewed through the iPad 2’s camera. And that’s on top of all the other cool features, like a satellite tracker, night mode and a time-machine function that lets you see what the sky looks like on any given day or time.

Still saving for an iPad 2? That’s ok, the iPhone version has the same features (but not the awesomeness of the iPad’s giant screen), and it’s on sale for a buck till April 12 — which, not coincidentally,  is Yuri’s Night.

Just like Pogoplug and ZumoCast (the latter currently MIA from the app store), Tonido is a service that’ll let users stream media and access files on a computer from a mobile device. It sort of combines features from both — it’s completely free, works via a mobile app that connects to server software (free download from Tonido) running the user’s computer and allows access to music, videos, photos and even plain ‘ol documents. In fact, pretty much everything on a connected hard drive is accessable.

The big difference with Tonido though, is that virtually nothing is stored in a cloud — not even your account password (“think of the Tonido server like a giant router” says co-founder Venkat Ramasay). Don’t want to use your computer as the server? Tonido sells a remarkably-Pogoplug-looking NAS device for $99 that you can plug an external HDD or USB stick into. Ramasay says the software footprint is also very small, and that’s it’s also intended to run on home routers.  The next version will also support Airplay.

The interface seems a little rough around the edges — I wasn’t able to stream music because I couldn’t figure out a way to simply select music to play, for instance — but it’s free, so worth taking a look at.

We close out another week with three hardware deals. First up are nine iMacs from the Apple Store, starting at $1,019 for an i3 powered iMac running at 3.06GHz. The desktop machine also has a 22-inch screen. Next is a luxury iPad convertible flip case. The final spotlight item is a USB turntable from Numark which converts your vinyl to MP3 and then ships them to your iPod with a built-in dock.

Along the way, we also check out other deals on iPad cases, as well as software and accessory bargains. As always, details on these and many other products can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Earlier today, we brought you a report from CrunchGear about a Best Buy employee who had revealed that the retail giant was deliberately saving stock of the iPad 2 once it had met its sales quotas each day – a technique that apparently didn’t sit too well with Apple.

Since then, Best Buy has denied rumors that it has fallen out with the Cupertino company, and declared it was holding stock of the iPad 2 for an “upcoming promotion.”

In an official statement sent to Boy Genius Report, Best Buy said:

Best Buy continues to receive iPad 2 inventory from Apple on a regular basis. As we’ve said previously, we are fulfilling customer reservations first.

Our stores have been asked to temporarily hold non-reserved iPad 2 inventory for an upcoming promotion. This is a customary practice for us when there are supply constraints. Best Buy enjoys a great partnership with Apple, and we’re delighted by customer response to iPad 2.

While Best Buy seem to have clarified the issue of holding stock, it did not comment on a claim that its employees were lying to customers by informing them they had no stock of the second generation device, when in fact its stock rooms could be littered with them.

Selling itself as the first app to help hunters find their prey, iHunt Journal may also be on target for controversy.

iHunt Journal, approved by Apple for use by anyone over the age four because it contains no objectionable material, calls itself the “ultimate all-in-one hunting app:”

Whether your focus is on planning your next hunt based on weather and solunar periods, keeping a trophy gallery and hunting journal, or statistics and research of your past hunts, this is the application you need.

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If you’ve jailbroken your device for the first time this week (thanks to the iOS 4.3.1 untethered jailbreak being released), chances are that you may not know where to begin. There are thousands of neat things that you can do once jailbroken.

This post will cover just 6 of them, all of which I personally consider “must-have” tweaks for anybody who has recently joined the jailbreak scene.

This weekend sees the final of the 2011 Masters Golf Tournament, and as a way of celebrating, EA has reduced some of its most popular iPhone and iPod touch games by up to 67%. Of course, the brand new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 is the one you’ll want most during the Masters commercial breaks.

There are 10 great games featured in the sale, including Dead Space, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, The Sims 3, and The Simpsons Arcade. Check out the full list after the break!

You may have read Thursday a report Apple has purchased equipment to store 12 petabytes (around 12,000 terabytes) of data, prompting some to suggest the deal targets the Cupertino, Calif. company’s expected cloud-based services. Friday, one Wall Street analyst said such huge amounts of data “dovetail nicely” with a ‘Cloud Tunes,’ an online version of Apple’s popular iTunes.

“We believe that Apple will release a new cloud strategy by the fall, likely integrating its MobileMe services and taking advantage of its significant investments in its North Carolina data center,” writes Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital.

It’s been shown that tots take to iPads like ducks to water. One school district in Maine will hand them out to 5-year-olds in the hopes of boosting reading skills.

An iPad pilot program in Auburn, Maine will put them in the hands of kids in certain classrooms in May and all six elementary schools in the district next fall.

Officials hope to improve literacy rates from 62 percent to 90 percent in two years with the iPad scheme. The school committee recently approved spending of about $200,000 for 285 iPads for both students and teachers.