San Diego Comic-Con 2014 may be over, but with all of the announcements out of the way, now we get to reap the rewards. Among the event’s iOS-related announcements was Marvel’s proclamation that its great Marvel Pinball app is getting a new table, to celebrate the company’s new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. To mark the occasion, the app is going free for the first time ever.

There are some pretty great Wikipedia apps out there already (my favorite is Das Referenz, an iPad app which turns Wikipedia pages into what looks like 17th century book entries), but Wikipedia has just made a gambit to be best of the bunch with a major redesign of its own iOS app.

Version 4.0 of Wikipedia Mobile sports a total overhaul of the app’s design, with a complete native rewrite that makes searching for information a faster and more enjoyable experience.

Travel can be a chance to practice minimalism, or an opportunity to drive yourself nuts. What am I talking about? Luggage. You can pare down your essentials to fit in a carry-on – even if you’re away for a month – or you can throw in every item of clothing and every charger you have. The second approach will result in a broken back, and you’ll still find that you left something essential at home.

Over the years, I’ve perfected my packing technique so that I only take the bare minimum. And when I say “perfected,” I mean “struggled with.” But it works for me, and the principles can be applied even if you’re the kind of person who hires a boy to carry your trunks for you when you take a cruise on the Titanic.

So here’s the Cult of Mac Guide to Traveling Light, a roundup of strategies, product recommendations and other tips to make your next trip a breeze.

Where there’s a popular idea, you can be sure the clones will follow. Earlier this year the popular app in question was Flappy Bird, and here in July it’s simplified message app Yo, which has to date received $1.5m in funding.

A few weeks back we wrote about Yo spoof Hodor, but it seems that there’s another more pressing clone out there, called Yolo, which Yo founder Or Arbel describes as “a complete fake copy of our Yo app.”

In response to Yolo, Arbel has filed a complaint with Apple, asking it to remove Yolo from the App Store since it allegedly infringes on Arbel’s copyright and trademark.

Song recognition service Shazam has launched a cool new Mac app. Called, originally, Shazam for Mac, the always-on app lives in your Mac’s menu bar, and offers some neat features.

Constantly listening for songs to identify, Shazam for Mac springs to life whenever it finds a song you want to know about, creating a playlist as it goes along, and alerting users via a standard Notification Center popup. Once a song has been ID’d, the app gives you the option of one-click access to lyrics, music videos, or the option to buy the track on iTunes.

On the Mac, 1Password is a perfect Swiss Army Knife of tools for the forgetful and lazy, guaranteeing that they never have type in a password, address field, or credit card number into an online form ever again.

But on iOS, 1Password has been a more convoluted thing. Lacking deep integration with other apps, 1Password for iOS has never been as good as it’s Mac counterpart. But with iOS 8, that’s about to change, thanks to a 1Password app extension that any third-party app can use.

A comic book movie about misfit space superheroes might not seem to have much in common with Apple’s long-rumored entry into wearable computing. However, for a handful of reasons, Guardians of the Galaxy is to Marvel Studios what the iWatch is to Apple –- a high-profile release that’s critical to the company’s future success.

Here’s why.

SAN FRANCISCO — Sébastien Leidgens wants to put a new angle on the business card.

His invention, Cubr, is a six-sided die that connects people through private mobile web chat. When a red, blue or green Cubr is tossed your way, you hit the website or download the app, then enter the code to start your instant message convo or share photos with the person who gave you the die. The enterprising Belgian, a former project manager at a digital marketing agency, is taking a gamble on the idea that people are tired of handing out one-dimensional cards.

“It’s a business card for non-business people,” Leidgens says in an English heavily influenced by his native French. “Young people don’t have business cards. This you can use for private situations in everyday life. It’s a lot more fun and outside of the usual public circles.”

You may know FreedomPop as the guys who will turn your iPod touch into a free iPhone, but if you have an iPad, the carrier is now willing to do the same thing, giving any Sprint-compatible iPad free talking, texting and data.

Say whatever you want about the cold reception afforded its Fire Phone, but Amazon’s had a pretty great year when it comes to its core business of selling books: first announcing the creation of its Kindle Unlimited scheme, and now updating its iOS Kindle app with a few nifty features.

Chief among these are Wikipedia integration, letting readers pick selected words from any text they’re reading and link to the relevant Wikipedia page — particularly useful in the case of non-fiction books.