Las Vegas isn’t the easiest town to get along with when something big is going down. Case in point: During CES back in January, I was shocked to see the nightly rate for my hotel room skyrocket by roughly 600 percent — pretty much matching my entire budget — during the show’s high-water mark (understandable, since the hotel was an easy stroll from the LV Convention Center, where the show squats).

I panicked for a few minutes, swore, then sat down and fired up the Hotwire app I’d just installed. Within an hour I was at the lobby of a swank joint, just off the strip, with my own suite — for a fraction of the rate of my old room (which, frankly, was a craphole).

And today’s release of the Universal Hotwire app dismisses the only real complaint I had: Having to use the iPhone-only app on my iPad.

Instagram’s new video feature has taken off like wild fire as more than 5 million clips were uploaded in the first 24 hours alone. Many of those new 15-second Instagram videos are all over Twitter, but depending on the Twitter client you’re using, you might not be able to view them.

Tapbots announced today that it has added Instagram video support to its popular Twitter app, Tweetbot. The update is available on both the iPad and iPhone apps which run $2.99 a piece in the App Store.

Source: iTunes

Twitter’s #music app for iPhone is supposed to become one of the best ways to discover new and popular music. To help users fine tune their discovery needs, Twitter updated #music today to include  a new Genres feature for its charts.

The new Genres feature expands the number of areas users can select to search for music. You can now browse for music in country, hip-hop, pop, R&B and more. Twitter’s also included new categories for Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearth and Hunted charts.

Here’s what’s new:

The Cult of Mac team used Glassboard to help coordinate our reporting efforts at this year’s CES back in January. It was quick, simple, tied us all together and made the show a little less crazy.

This time around, maybe we’ll dump Glassboard for Anchor, released today. It’s an app with the same basic idea — hanging out and communicating with all your teammates through your iPhone — but with a heavy slant toward fun. And if anything is a great antidote for crazy, it’s fun.

The official Skype apps for iOS have been updated today to add free and unlimited video messaging, which previously required a $4.99 per month Skype Premium subscription. The updates also bring a number of other improvements to things like photo sharing and call stability.

In the OS X Calendar, at least up to OS X Mountain Lion, the way to move from month to month, or week to week, is to hit the right or left arrows near the top of the calendar window, a fairly typical mechanic among calendar apps, really.

In OS X Mavericks beta, however, you can move through them much more intuitively. Here’s how.

This is Flowboard‘s second significant update since the app’s April launch, and like the first, brings meaty upgrades. In this case, the big news is that the app now gives you the ability to embed YouTube clips and PDFs in your digital publication, and thankfully adds a way to undo you last action.

The modern digital camera is a miracle. It can take photos in light so low that you can’t even focus the lens manually. It can record thousands of images onto a single SD card, or it can shoot RAW and let you make incredible adjustments back in the comfort of your own home.

But one thing that has driven me crazy with pretty much every digital camera I have ever owned is its charger. They’re almost universally terrible. Which is why I bought this Digipower alternative. But is it actually any better?

The MacBook Pro already looks pretty stellar. But there are a few add-ons you can pick up that will add even more style to it, and this Cult of Mac Deals offer is a shining example of one of them.

Lazerwood Keys are a sleek way to make your MacBook Pro stand out and add an element of style to your notebook that is truly unique. And Cult of Mac Deals has Lazerwood Keys in cherry wood for only $35 during this limited time offer.

There are countless third-party apps that allow you to scan QR codes and Data Matrixes on your iPhone, but wouldn’t it be easier if you could read them inside the built-in Camera app? Well, with a new tweak for jailbroken iOS devices called Decode Camera, you can.