I’ve always had trouble explaining my addiction to Keita Takahashi’s surrealist puzzle-action game Katamari Damacy to people who have never had the psychotropic thrill of rolling up a giant ball of cows, schooners and sea monsters for the approval of the binge-drinking, rainbow-clad King of All Cosmos.

If you’re one of those people, and if that last sentence didn’t make a lick of sense to you, then I’m going to have an even harder time describing Takahashi’s follow-up title, Noby Noby Boy, in which the worm-like, quadrupedal BOY must stretch his ever-lengthening abdominal section across the map to reach his one true love, GIRL. So let’s just leave it at the fact that a port of Noby Noby Boy has hit the iTunes App Store for $1.99 and call it a day, shall we?

Except I really can’t, because Noby Noby Boy looks like a very different game on the iPhone. In fact, it isn’t even being placed under the “Games” section, but is rather listed as a Productivity app. Indeed, it doesn’t seem like much of a game at all: according to the App Store Listing, you can use BOY to become the hands of a clock, use BOY‘s body as a notepad and use the GPS unit to stretch BOY according to how far you’ve traveled in the real world?

Neat? Jeez, I don’t even know. Who would have thought that Takahashi could have taken the weirdest game he’s ever made and turned it into an even weirder iPhone productivity app? It’s only 2 bucks, though, so what the hell.

After a Reuters reporter began taking photos outside the factory, Foxconn guards grabbed him and tried to drag him into the factory. Police later told the reporter: “This is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.”

Some devices are more versatile than others.

Though the 2002 iLamps were declared “obsolete” by Apple in 2009, the repurposed stainless steel base plate of this iMac G4 makes a nice wall clock.

It’s the handiwork of a Japanese Apple fan, who published a step-by-step DIY project.

It’ll go nicely with your G4 iLamp Lamp, too, and probably won’t take more than half an hour to make.

Not to be trusted with a drill? There’s a ready-made version on Etsy for $30.

Via Blog! NoBon

Details are emerging on Apple’s pricing plans for e-books sold for its new iPad tablet device. The $12.99 to $14.99 range often cited as a reason publishers are using to defy Amazon is seen only an “option.” Instead, the Cupertino, Calif. electronics maker would sell best-selling titles as low as the often-disparaged $9.99 price.

“Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best-sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower than Amazon’s $9.99,” the New York Times reported Thursday.

Apple, yet again, is being painted as the reason for a predicted shortage in flash memory, used in everything from digital cameras to iPhones. The iPhone and iPad, along with a predicted avalanche of imitators, could create “insatiable demand” for flash (or NAND) memory in 2010, according to research firm iSuppli.

Analyst Michael Young forecasts the average iPhone sold in 2010 will use 35.2 GB of flash memory. Multiply that by the 33 million iPhones expected to sell this year (up from 25.1 million in 2009) and it is “likely to lead to some periods of under-supply for the year.”

A few months ago we reviewed Osprey’s Flap Jack Courier laptop bag, and it scored a pristine five-turtleneck rating.

Well, turns out they actually come in two flavors, and we decided to put the Courier’s big brother — the Flap Jack Pack — through the Cult’s rigorous, uncompromising bag-testing procedures. The result was a demonstration of how applying the exact same design elements to a slightly different application can change things.

The Brenthaven MacBook Messenger bag allows you, the customer, to design your own messenger bag. You can choose from more than ten designs to personalize the front flap.

Wait, it gets better.

You get two different designs, one for each side of the flap. Allowing you to change sides depending on your outfit! It’s almost like getting two bags for the price of one ($129.95). The bags fit the 13-inch MacBook Pro and 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.

Gelaskins has teamed up with National Geographic to produce a new line of stunning, nature-themed MacBook and iPhone covers.

Priced between $14.95 and $29.95 depending on device, the covers showcase photos of cute baby seals, weirdly-colored snails and trippy space nebula.

More info at the Gelaskins website.

More pictures after the jump.

No one should fault a company for protecting its trademark whether in the real world or on the App Store, but the University of Texas has taken things too far, trying to get their former students to pull the useful iTexas app from iTunes because the University claims that it infringes on their trademark on Texas.

iTexas is a free app released by Mutual Mobile that allows students to access their class schedule, search the UT directory, check out their grades, look at the day’s cafeteria menus and more. It sounds like a must-have app for iPhone-toting UT students, and while Mutual Mobile has had complaints from the university before — namely, when the app was called “UT Directory” and used the school colors in the design scheme — they were quick to rename the application and address the concerns.

You’d think that would end the problem, but now the University of Texas is claiming that because iTexas uses the word “Texas” in the App Name, it is too “confusingly similar to [UT’s] Texas [trademark].”

Look, this is just totally absurd in every detail: from the way the University of Texas is gunning for a company for releasing a totally free app with obvious utility to the majority of their students, to the fact that UT got a trademark on a State name in the first place.

Perhaps Techdirt said it best: “Lesson learned. Don’t try to make life better for UT students without first paying the University.”

This is the sort of apocalyptically messy work room that any man can be proud of, but Flickr user Grant ups the ante for Mac fans because of the deliriously implausible and achingly retro home server housed within.

What you are looking at are three old school Power Macs : a 9600/200MP “Kansas” running Webstar 4 and RumpusFTP, an 8500/120 “Nitro” running MacHTTP and a Dual 450MHz “Mystic” with 1GB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive running OS X 10.4.11.

Those are pretty rad, but even better is what’s not in the shot: his Apple Newton web server.

Grant, we salute you. That’s just some amazing mileage you’re getting out of a garage of old-but-still-in-their-prime Power Macs.

[via MAKE]

Hadouken! Although Street Fighter IV almost obliges its players to invest in a special arcade stick in order to be playable even on next-gen consoles, Capcom’s still going to try to bring its famous fighting game to the iPhone and iPod Touch… although the virtual joystick should be enough to arch the eyebrows of anyone who has pumped a quarter into a Street Fighter arcade machine.

The New York Times, one of the iPad’s most vociferous and earliest proponents, now seems split on how much to charge for a version of the ‘newspaper of record’ for the tablet. The newspaper is split on pricing, with the print side and digital side at odds. The publication is considering charging iPad owners between $10 and $30 to read its paper, claims a report.

Citing an unnamed source, Gawker writes the print side wants to charge $20 to $30 per month for an iPad version of the daily newspaper. The argument is that the iPad would cut into subscriptions of the print edition, thus requiring the higher price tag. Currently, the newspaper offers much of its print content online for free, although that may end next year. New York Times Media Group president Scott Heekin-Canedy reportedly sides with the print division.

Mea culpa. If you bought a MacBook between 2006 and 2007 and your hard drive sounds like an unoiled rock tumbler trying to work its way through a belly full of rusty bolts, you could be eligible for a free replacement, courtesy of Apple.

Admitting that a “very small percentage” of plastic MacBooks (namely, the original 2006 model and the mid-2007 model) “may fail under certain conditions,” Apple is inviting owners with a failed hard drive to hit up their local Genius Bar and see about a replacement.

If you’re one of the unluckily lucky eligible, Gizmodo has some helpful advice from a Mac Genius on how to make sure your computer gets the replacement: “If you really want to freak out a genius bar employee, just sidle up and mention you have a CS-matrix-eligible macbook hard drive replacement. or don’t because we’ll hate you for being douchey.”

Sounds like a good plan… although an Apple Genius calling a customer douchey? Why, hello, Mr. Pot… this is Kettle.

Apple sales of Mac computers jumped 36 percent in January, potentially signaling 2.8 million will be sold for the first three months of 2010, according to retail sales figures released Tuesday. If on target, sales would beat a Wall Street estimate for 2.6 million Macs sold during the first quarter, one analyst said.

Although Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in December proclaimed 2010 the “Year of the Mac,” he said it is “way too early” to predict how the quarter will end. Many expect Apple to introduce new or updated MacBook Pro notebooks, a move that could boost sales.

Now you can carry around quotes like “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall,” from Che Guevara on your iPhone. (Irony not included.)

Guevara, launched Feb. 12 for $0.99 or €.79, is the latest app in the iTunes store to capitalize on lightning rod figures. Not to be confused with iChe, another Italian-developed app released four days later, Guevara features notable quotes from the Argentine revolutionary and guerilla war tactician in English, Spanish, French and Italian.

All of these apps were approved first for the Italian iTunes store but are for sale in others, including the US store, too.

The first of its kind was iMussolini, an app featuring famous quotes and speeches of the Fascist ruler. Despite a storm of complaints, iMussolini was only yanked for a week over copyright issues.  Once ranked no. 2 in the Italian app store, developer Luigi Marino tells us his creation has been dowloaded 8,000 times so far. It is once again for sale, along with another similar app of Mussolini’s speeches.

It seems there is a kind of double standard for quote apps of controversial figures: the US iTunes store features six apps of Dalai Lama teachings and quotes, but these were all removed from China’s iTunes store leading to cries of censorship.

The Guevara app, given a +12 rating for “mild or infrequent horror/ fear /violence themes”  was developed by two 30-something Italian IT consultants who have created another five apps on the iTunes store.

As far as we know, there have been no formal complaints to Apple about the El Che quote app. (Apple has not responded to our requests for comment).

Cult of Mac talked in exclusive with one of the developers of Guevara, Marcantonio Magnarapa, about an iPad version, the approval process and iMussolini.

Cult of Mac: How did you come up with the idea?

Marcantonio Magnarapa: We came up with the idea of a Che Guevara iPhone app while talking about the man behind the revolutionary –  inspired by the Steven Soderbergh movie, actually.

However you might feel about his actions, there is no doubt that his words strike a chord in every one, independent of the era or place. His thoughts are as relevant today as they were back in his day.

Timing is everything, they say in comedy. Amazon probably isn’t laughing after reading a financial analyst’s prediction the online bookseller will see its share of the e-book market nosedive to 35 percent by 2015 at a time when revenue for electronic reading is expected to nearly triple. Why? Two words: Apple iPad.

Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang expects Amazon’s share of the e-book market to be more than halved by the iPad, falling to 35 percent by 2015, down from 90 percent in 2009. Just as Amazon’s market share for e-books shrinks, revenue from e-books is expected to explode; hitting $775 million by 2015, up from $248 million last year. The skyrocketing demand could also be helped by a number of big-named publishers – Macmillion, HarperCollins and Hachette – using the iPad to force Amazon to drop its $9.99 flat-price on e-books.

I’ve been a long-time user of messenger bags, ever since I was a bike courier here in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. I’ve been though a few of them, including an original Zo bag, but one of the best I’ve used is the Large Messenger Bag from Incase.

Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.

I took the LA Besace bag with me to Macworld and boy am I glad I did!

This bag is an absolute pleasure to use. Its semicircular front opening is a superb design that makes everything highly visable and accessible. No more wasted time digging around for stuff in bags!

Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.

Here’s some video of Wired‘s digital version of the magazine in action.

Check out the amazing 360 of the car ad at the 1.33 point. A glossy magazine ad comes to life and you’re able rotate it with your finger. It’s totally sci-fi — and very, very cool.

Wired’s EIC  Chris Anderson says the iPad and other tablets are a big opportunity for the publishing industry, and Wired is betting big on them.

“Much is still to be answered about magazines and other media on this emerging class of devices, from the business and distribution models to the consumer response. But what is already clear is that they offer the opportunity to be beautiful, highly engaging and immersive, going beyond what’s available on the web. I think tablets are going to sell like hotcakes, in part because they offer such an intimate, rich media experience. We’re betting big on them, as you can see, but this is just a taste. Stay tuned for a full release this summer.”

The app is designed to run using Adobe’s Air, but can be easily repurposed for the iPad and other devices, Anderson says. He showed it off for the first time last week at the TED conference.

Via Wired’s Epicenter blog.

Cell phone cameras are unmitigated garbage. By nature, the CMOS chips have to be small, which means less surface area to suck in light. That’s fine in an emergency, or to snap a lip-pursed Snooki shot of some girls you met at the bar, but right now, you’ll simply never take a snap with a cameraphone that equals the picture quality of even that five-year old digicam lurking in your obsolete gadget drawer.

Worse: all too often, cameraphone makers try to compensate for the terrible image quality of their chips by cramming more megapixels into the chip, which fools buyers into thinking they are getting a better camera, but counter-intuitively just makes image quality even poorer. What’s needed is better chips, not more megapixels.

So it’s exciting to see OmniVision come out with a new, RAW-capable CMOS sensor for cellphones. Shooting in RAW means that no data is lost when your phone converts the image data from the CMOS into a JPEG, so it should improve image quality… especially given the OmniVision sensor maxes out at 5 megapixels.

Big shocker: Microsoft isn’t supporting Adobe’s Flash in its brand new Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Windows Phone 7 joins Apple’s iPhone and iPad in snubbing the widely-used plug-in.

The news was delivered to Information Week, which received a surprise email from Adobe saying:

“While the newest version of Windows Phone won’t support Flash at initial availability, both companies are working to include a browser plug-in for the full Flash player in future versions of Windows Phone. More details will be shared at Microsoft MIX next month.”

Information Week is skeptical. It says it’s not clear if Flash is coming to WinMo 7 at all.

Microsoft launched WinMo 7 on Monday to great acclaim. Blogs like Gizmodo and Wired’s Gadget Lab, which got to play with the new system at the Mobile World Congress, say it looks better and is easier to use than the iPhone. (Giz: Windows Phone 7 Interface: Microsoft Has Out-Appled Apple; Gadget Lab: Hands-On With Windows Phone 7 Series

Of course, Microsoft makes its own Silverlight platform, a rich-media platform which competes with Flash on the web.

Although Apple has remained officially mum on the issue of Flash, it’s widely understood that the company views the plug-in as buggy and power-hungry.

Not all smartphone makes are snubbing Flash, however.  Adobe just announced Flash for Google’s Android platform, it’s first step into mobile.

Information Week: Windows Mobile 7 Won’t Get Flash

Via Gadget Lab.

We start today with a deal on MacBooks, including $849 for a 2.26GHz Core 2 13.3″-inch white model. Also on tap: a new round of App Store price drops, including an iPhone, iPod touch adaptation of the classic PAC-MAN video game. Finally, Adobe Photoshop Elements image manipulation software is available for $50.

Along the way, we’ll look at many other Apple-related bargains, including the Air Mouse Pro for the iPhone, Altec Lansing speakers for the iPod and a Philips Transdock II FM transmitter and car charger for the iPod.

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

Although I’m still an Adium man on my primary Mac, I’ve been using the excellent online IM client Meebo for years to keep in contact with a decade’s worth of collected buddies scattered across ever instant messaging protocol under the sun across multiple machines.

Unfortunately, using the Meebo site on the iPhone was never quite as good as an experience. I’m really excited to see, then, that they’ve just released a native Meebo app to the iTunes App Store.

All the best features of Meebo are here, including searchable chat history across all of your Meebo sessions, regardless of machine, and support for just about every IM protocol under the sun. The Meebo app will also push IM notifications to you when the app is closed, and early reports suggest that it keeps you logged in far longer than just about any other IM app out there. It’ll even automatically reconnect when you lose coverage.

The best news, though, is the price: Meebo is completely free. I’ve been a huge fan of the Meebo web service for years: if you do any instant messaging on your iPhone at all, this is worth a download.

The first step in Apple taking on netbooks without releasing a netbook was the iPad with cheap 3G support from AT&T. Now comes word the carrier may start selling iPads in its stores – and pushing out netbooks to make room. The rumor comes on the heels of reports European carriers will subsidize the iPad’s price for a two-year contract.

“We’re told the general plan is to convert one or two existing netbook display sections in each corporate AT&T location into a pretty substantial iPad display area,” according to Boy Genius Reports, citing a carrier source “down South” indicating the company will sell the 3G iPad.

Swede and Apple enthusiast Anders Norman saw his every possession melted and charred in a cataclysmic home conflagration that gutted his entire apartment.

The only item left standing? His aluminum iMac: dirty, singed, partly melted, but still cheerily humming along.