Fancy being able to use fingerprints to enable payment verification on PayPal for making purchases?
Having announced that feature with the Samsung Galaxy S5 at Mobile World Congress back In February, PayPal finally debuted that integration today — letting users in 25 different countries login to PayPal by simply placing one of their chubby digits on their brand new phone’s fingerprint sensor.
Have a great app idea written down in a notebook that would make you a millionaire if only you could turn it into a working prototype? (Sure you do!)
Marvel is a great iPhone app that lets you take sketches and turn them into a free prototype, by applying “hotspots” to your images and then letting you link these hotspots with other photos to create a demo you can tap your way through.
Got a tough, possibly life-changing ethical decision to make? Why not make your iPhone part of the decision-making process?
A recently released app called Ethical Decision Making lets you work through your options by prompting you to identify the people who have a stake in your decision, consider your options through five different ethical perspectives, weigh different approaches, and score and rank potential decisions.
I like this Hammerhead Lightning cable for two reasons: it’s red, and the cable is flat. Actually, make that three reasons – it’s called the Hammerhead, like the frikkin shark.
Here’s how to do Spotify voice search on the iPhone or iPad.
Alternatively you can buy the new Vela app for $0.99, and skip all the tedious screen tapping.
T-Mobile’s new deal on LTE iPads is a doozy. The ‘Uncarrier’ is shaking things up again by offering LTE iPads for the price of their WiFi-only counterparts. And on top of that, more free data is involved.
Heartbleed sent the web reeling with the discovery that the catastrophic security hole quietly left passwords and other private data open for the taking on nearly 66% of the Internet’s servers. Luckily for Apple customers, iOS and OS X were never vulnerable to Heartbleed but some of the most popular sites and services on the Internet weren’t so lucky.
Many companies are still working to patch their hole, but Mashable has compiled a list of the biggest sites hit by Heartbleed. There’s no way to tell if your info was actually snatched by attackers, but if you have account on the following sites that were affected and subsequently patched, you should change your password ASAP:
Fancy building your own glittering high-tech utopia, or a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis?
Either way, gamers will be happy to know that SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition today became available for download, exclusively in the Mac App Store. Combining both SimCity 4 and the Rush Hour expansion pack — which adds bonus disasters like UFO attacks and Autosaurus Wrecks — the game is a steal at $19.99.
Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.
Enjoy!
Sage the Gemini – Remember Me
Los Angeles is getting a lot of credit for the west coast’s rap resurgence thanks to Kendrick Lamar, YG, and the A$AP crew, but Sage the Gemini would like to turn your attention to the Bay Area this week with his debut album that has everything from hopping instructional dance floor drills like Gas Pedal and College Drop to your bravado tracks, while also exploring Sage’s variety combined and garrulous charm.
iTunes – $9.99
Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
I fell hard. It took me just 30 seconds to love, love, love Todd Terje’s new album. The other 3,520 seconds weren’t bad either as Terje mixes a delicious cocktail of disco and surf tone instrumentals. It’s kind of like elevator music, only really fun danceable elevator music.
iTunes – $9.99
EMA – The Future’s Void
Erika M. Anderson, better known by her stage name EMA, perked ears up with her debut album Past Life Martyred Saints due to the brutal intimacy of her songs, but with her latest effort, The Future’s Void, EMA goes for something new by turning her focus to things and issues rather than the people she cut herself off from in the first album.
iTunes – $9.99
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014
by Carlotta Gall
Many many books will yet be written about the war in Afghanistan, but few will have a deeper personal acquaintance with Afghanistan and Pakistan New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall who has been reporting from the area for almost the entire duration of the American invasion. Now that the U.S. is on its way out, Gall’s book outlines how we’ve been fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong country.
iTunes – $18.99
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, the third novel from Gabrielle Zevin, is about a 39-year-old widower named A.J., a cranky drunkard with a bookstore in shambles, but mostly it’s about reading. Each chapter starts with the title of short story or book and note from A.J. that introduces each new character along with what they read, using literature as his prism for judgement.
iTunes – $11.99
The Divide
by Matt Taibbi
The yawning economic gap has promised to be a huge issue coming up in this year’s midterm elections which makes Matt Taibbi’s new book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap a timely read if you’re curious about two alarming trends – growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration.
iTunes – $13.99
Philomena
Philomena is based on the incredible true story of British journalist Martin Sixsmith, who reluctantly decides to accompany Philomena Lee on her search to find the son who was taken from her at a convent 50 years ago. The film could’ve been a sentimental nightmare in other hands, but thanks to the stellar cast, journey is both smart, funny and heartfelt.
iTunes – $14.99
Ride Along
I usually find Kevin Hart’s hyperactive comedy riffs too exhaustive to be enjoyable, but tempered against the stone- cold attitude of Ice Cube he’s pretty great. Here in Ride Along, the two actors are a police duo out on ride-along designed to scare the hell out of Hart’s character so he’ll stop foolin’ around with Cube’s sister.
iTunes – $14.99
Patton Oswalt: Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time
Technically you can also get Patton Oswalt’s latest stand-up special as an album, but Patton’s jokes on the trials and tribulations of frozen foods, failed outings with prostitutes, fatherhood and other uncensored topics are so much more entertaining watching them on the big screen with your friends.
iTunes – $14.99
If I’ve learned nothing else from science-fiction shows like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, it’s this: If society crumbles, even a little, we will revert back to a Wild-West mode of life.
I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s just more simple. Maybe it’s more practical. Odds are, though, that it’s just a cool motif for a story, and if you can get some spaceships or motorbikes in there, too, it’s like a bonus.
Trials Frontier, the latest in publisher Ubisoft’s physics-driven racing game franchise is out now, and it takes place in a rustic, post-apocalyptic world. But if you don’t care about that stuff, it’s also the series’ first appearance on mobile. And it’s free to play. And it’s really, really good.