Here comes another one of those apps that drops jaws with its ingenuity — it’s a heart rate monitor that uses the iPhone 4’s camera to measure minute changes in skin color caused by blood flowing into and out of a finger.

According to Heart Rate – Free‘s App Store press release, simply sticking a finger over the iPhoen 4’s camer should deliver a heart rate figure within a few seconds, accompanied by a heartbeat chart. The app’s developer is quick to point out that the Heart Rate – Free is for entertainment only, but the concept is remarkable.

As its name suggests, Heart Rate Free is free.

The iPhone 4’s attenuation problems aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, which means iPhone 4 owners are stuck with two options: fattening the iPhone with a case or bumper, or living with the issue.

But there’s a third option. ThinSkins are strips of vinyl or PVC, die-cut to wrap perfectly around the iPhone 4’s rim , creating a barrier between a user’s hand and the phone’s external antenna, potentially eliminating the attenuation problem. Interestingly enough they’re from TruePower, the same outfit that gave us the mother of all backpack batteries, the iV Pro.

ThinSkins launched a few weeks ago, sell for $20, are easy to apply (according to TruePower) and come in more colors than a bowl of Skittles.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder from flight404 on Vimeo.

Check out this awesome video of Kinect hacker Robert Hodgin manipulating the Kinect feed in realtime with Cinder, a C++ programming environment for creative projects. (Hodgin posted the source + OSX project here: https://code.google.com/p/ruisource/downloads/list)

And here’s one with his cat:

Fat Cat from flight404 on Vimeo.

Via Kottke.

As the days dwindle down to that all-important Black Friday start of holiday shopping, we have a few door-buster deals of our own. First up is the Black Friday App for your iPhone, allowing you to stay mobile, while scanning the sales fliers and snooping through the web sites of your favorite stores. Next is a deal on a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad for just $449 – shipping is free. We finally take a look at the latest crop of free iPhone apps, including the intriguingly-named “Rednecks v. Aliens” game.

Along the way, we also take a look at several iPad cases, a deal on EA games for your iPhone or iPad and assorted add-ons for your favorite Apple device. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

A new analyst report out Tuesday highlights how ‘spin’ can affect how one reads the dry numbers of sales and shipments. For instance, Needham analyst Charlie Wolf chose to overlook the Mac’s 4.36 percent share of the PC market for the last quarter, instead concentrating a note to investors on how Apple’s growth is drubbing the otherwise tepid PC market. Mac shipments grew in September by 28.5 percent, far outstripping the 9.7 percent growth for PCs.

Additionally, Mac sales are firing on all cylinders propelled by the triple-threat halos from the iPod, iPhone and iPad. But wait, there’s even more good news. Mac shipments to business and home are exceeding those of PCs, according to researchers at IDC. Mac shipments to business during the third-quarter of 2010 were up 66.3 percent and grew 25.3 percent for the home market. That compares with overall business computer shipment growth of 8.5 percent and home growth of 10.4 percent.

It’s two days before Thanksgiving, and only 32 days away from Christmas, and we’re in a giving mood today!  Thanks to Urban Tool, we’ve got a couple of hip, cool, jazzy fresh bags to give away.  If you’re still rocking a Jansport backpack to work or for traveling, then you need to enter this giveaway.

Here’s How To Enter:

1. “Like” the Cult of Mac Facebook page if you haven’t already.
2. “Like” the Urban Tool Facebook page if you haven’t already.
3. Go to your Facebook profile, and write a status message about why you need a new bag and status tag Cult of Mac and Urban Tool’s page in your status.  If you don’t know how to status tag in Facebook, click here.
4. We’ll choose two winners at random based on your @mentions that shows up on our page wall and Urban Tool’s page wall.  Entry period ends at 11:59pm PST tonight.  We’ll contact winners on Wednesday, 11/24.

What You’ll Win

Each winner gets to choose between the stylish and hip pocketBar and slotBaron Urban Tool bags.  You can also choose the color you want!

Giveaway Details

This giveaway is void where prohibited and there is no purchase necessary to enter the giveaway.  Prizes will be shipped directly from Urban Tool.  Cult of Mac is not responsible for shipping/handling of the prize.  Please provide an accurate physical address if contacted that you are a winner.

Using the same engine as Unreal Citadel and the upcoming Infinity Blade, Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is a nifty looking iOS game by developer Trendy Entertainment that looks like a combination between Brutal Legend, World of Warcraft and Defense of the Ancients.

Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is due out in the middle of December for $2.99, along with an accompanying lite version, and will support Game Center for achievements and multiplayer between iOS devices, as well as Retina Display support.

Sure, it doesn’t look quite as pretty as other Unreal Enginer 3 games under iOS, but consider me sold anyway: to my tastes, Dungeon Defenders looks twice as fun.

If you’re flying on Delta through JFK this holiday season, you’ve now got a new way to wile away the time between flights: Delta has just installed 135 iPads at three of the airport’s gates, including Croque Madame, a French restaurant at Gates 21 and 22 in Terminal 2, and Bar Brace, an Italian restaurant at Gate 15 in Terminal 3.

Although the iPads are meant to encourage commuters to order food from their parent restaurants thanks to the included iPad menu apps, the management company responsible for their installation says that making a purchase is optional, and that the wireless internet connection is completely free.

That’s a swank little perk for flying Delta. Of course, you wouldn’t be caught dead traveling without your iPad anyway, would you?

While the audio benefits of an unpowered iPhone speaker dock are pretty minimal, Koostik’s line of wooden docks specially carved from assorted species of tree trunk in order to channel and boost your device’s sound volume are undeniably classy enough to live on almost any mantle. At $85 each, though, you almost wish they had at least a couple whizbang LEDs implanted within to justify the price.

Nuance, maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking, is not a new member of Apple’s acquisitions. That’s the opinion of a writer at TechCrunch, who suggests Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak misspoke during a video interview. Although Nuance has no official comment the company’s stock rose five percent Monday night on the speculation.

Remarking how voice recognition will likely take on more importance by computer makers, Wozniak said: “Apple’s probably thinking the same way; they recently bought Nuance that does a lot of great voice recognition for that program I mentioned, the Siri Assistant.”

With every major new release of iOS comes a period of anticipation for the next release of a stable jailbreak courtesy of the iPhone Dev Team… and the good news this time around is that it doesn’t look like iOS 4.2.1 set the Dev Team back very far at all.

One of the most frustrating aspects of iOS 4.2 and OS X 10.6.5 is how Apple’s new wireless printing standard, AirPrint, was gimped at the last minute from running on pretty much every shared network printer connected to a Mac to only officially supported on 11 AirPrint-compatible printers.

One iPad owner named Stan was so frustrated, in fact, that he wrote to Steve Jobs. “You got me all hyped about AirPrint. Now with iOS 4.2 released, I find out that I can only print on 11 select printers. Seriously?!”

Seriously, replies Steve, before reassuring Stan that the move to driverless, wireless printing is a vast undertaking, and that iOS 4.2’s AirPrint support is only the first step.

Although the rest of the gadget blogging community never has any shortage of scale-model Enterprises or working 8-bit computers built block by blockto write about, it’s harder for us Minecraft lovers here at Cult of Mac to find an opportunity to declare our adoration for the charming and addictive voxel-based world builder.

Thankfully, one resourceful Apple fan has just come to our rescue with an incredible recreation of the famous 5th Avenue Apple Store.

Yesterday’s update to iOS 4.2 brought a lot of great new features to the table, but for some users, it introduced one big problem: the ability to listen to music on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Apple 1 system number 82 has found a new owner, for the bargain basement price of only $213,600 (£133,250).  Sold via Christie’s of London, and originally shipped from Steve Jobs’ garage, the pre-auction estimate had been up to $240,000 (£150,000).  The buyer remains unknown at the time of this posting.

The Apple 1 was considered the first personal computer, and approximately 200 systems were produced.  About a quarter of those survive today.  This kit includes the motherboard, cassette adapter, manuals, the original shipping box in good condition, and a signed letter from Steve Jobs to the first owner.

This particular Apple 1 has made the rounds.  Cult of Mac first reported on it in November 2009 when it was posted on eBay for $50,000. A year later and it has appreciated significantly in value.

What’s in your attic?

Pop some acid and the above video above will look chromatically normal to you, but as some owners of Sony and Philips brand televisions are discovering, dropping some lysergic bliss is about the only way to get the new AppleTV to play nice with their sets.

Following Thanksgiving as it does, Black Friday — and it’s smaller and more stupidly named sister “holiday.” Cyber Monday — is generally an America-only affair, but not if you shop directly from Apple, who are now teasing their November 26th “one-day Apple shopping event” both domestically and internationally.

TJ Maxx and Marshall’s are selling a limited number of iPads for $100 off their retail price at random outlets this Black Friday weekend, but as Steve Jobs made abundantly clear in an e-mail yesterday, they’re not an authorized reseller.

Where’d TJ Maxx get all the iPads then? Easy. They might not be an official reseller, but that hasn’t stopped them from buying from one… or reselling those iPads at a loss.

Following yesterday’s story that Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch might meet on stage to debut the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, comes a new report suggesting not only that Apple will hold that event on December 9th, but also use it as an opportunity to unveil a new subscription billing option for periodicals on the iPad.

Apple’s elves in China are going into hyper-drive to meet expected increased holiday demand for the red-hot iPad, a report suggests Tuesday. Foxconn Electronics has added new manufacturing sites able to produce 10,000 additional tablets each day.

The new plants in Chengdu could eventually produce enable Foxconn to produce around 40 million iPads per year, prompting the report to call the inland China factories “a major supply base” for the first quarter of 2011. Apple could sell 15 million iPads in 2010 and start 2011 with a second-generation tablet.

Here’s AirPlay working on the new Apple TV streaming from an iPad. It works great in Apple’s Video app and YouTube, but I can get audio only to work in iTunes — video isn’t working.

When I select the AirPlay popup, it shows a speaker icon for the AppleTV — not the normal screen icon. Audio streams fine but it won’t play video. Puzzled.

UPDATE: It’s audio only in Netflix too.

UPDATE 2: It looks like video playback is disabled in certain apps, including iTunes on iOS devices, which is more of a storefront than a multimedia app. Video bought through iTunes and played back through the iPod app on an iPhone (and the Videos app on an iPad) work fine. Jason Snell at Macworld had the same experience.

Here’s video of Apple’s new AirPlay video streaming running on an AppleTV updated to iOS 4.1. The Apple TV is playing a Family Guy trailer streaming from a MacBook Air. Pretty cool. The big question about AirPlay is whether it will play video that hasn’t been obtained from iTunes. The Family Guy trailer was downloaded from the iTunes store. I’ll be testing non-iTunes video shortly.

Black Friday’s an exciting time of the year for the gadget hound, but let’s face facts: so many of those big box discounts are purely illusory, and you can already get an equivalent or better price through Amazon.com.

That’s why Amazon has released Price Check, a free iOS app that lets you quickly check Amazon’s price on a product by scanning barcodes, snapping a picture, saying the product’s name aloud or typing it in to search. If the price is better, you can then easily add it to your shopping cart.

You can download Price Check for free here.

According to a new report by analyst Brian Marshall, we should all expect the iPad 2 in April.

No duh. Apple’s stuck to a rigidly defined yearly update cycle for all of their iOS devices, so you don’t need to go to Analysis U. to figure out exactly when to expect the next iPad.

But the April date for the iPad 2 isn’t really the meat of this story. More interesting is what Marshall says we should expect spec-wise from the iPad 2, which is… nothing special at all.

With just days left before Thanksgiving, we highlight three deals for your iPhone. First is a stylish Dot case for the iPhone 4 handset. For that case, we have a number of iPhone 4s – including a 32GB model for $249 – from AT&T. Finally, after the Thanksgiving festivities are over, it’s time for Black Friday – and we’ve got the app for you. The Black Friday app from dealnews keeps you update on all the ads (released and leaked), along with a way to store your shopping lists as you peruse the Web sites.

Along the way, we’ll also check out more deals on iPods, an 11g Airport Extreme and software for your Mac. As always, details on these and much more can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.