We have two deals on iPod shuffles from MidnightBox.com: grab a 2GB iPod shuffle for $35 or a 4GB model for $45. Also, we have the latest crop of App Store freebies, including “ShapeMind,” a geometry puzzle game.
Along the way, we’ll also check out a number of other Mac-related items, including MP3 albums, silicon laptop keyboard covers for your MacBook Pro and software for your iPhone or iPod touch.
As always, details on these any many more products are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
About one-in-five (or 20 percent) of third-party Android apps available through its marketplace can steal and share private user data, researchers said Tuesday. Akin to spyware, the apps can place calls and send text messages without the owners’ knowledge.
As a result of the growth of smartphones and associated stores, “applications are currently available that have the potential to cause serious harm to devices, customers and to the broader cellular network,” Daniel V. Hoffman, technology chief for SMobile Systems, an Android security vendor.
While the ability to set a user background wallpaper under iOS 4 is a welcome addition to the operating system, the default wallpaper choices can be pretty, well, garish. Some of them are just too busy, too high contrast, too gross.
The wallpaper above, called Tranquil, is Jason Kottke’s brilliant send-up of the questionable taste Apple employed when picking some the default iOS 4 wallpaper choices.
Just tap and hold on the image until the “Save Image” dialog appears to apply it as the wallpaper of your iPhone.
Halogen for iPad from developers RocketHands is a fast-paced action game that kind of mixes air hockey with Space Invaders. Your job is to smash a puck around the screen and activate the colored reactors on each side, while at the same time eliminating the hordes of colorful enemies that invade your space to collect enough Halogen elements to complete each level and achieve your highest score.
There are 4 game modes that will each push your reflexes to the limit – single player mode features 16 insanely crazy levels that start off fast and then become faster. Your enemies get bigger and nastier and the black hole at the bottom of your screen gets wider. This intense, fast-paced gameplay is what makes Halogen so addictive and keeps you returning to the game in an attempt to beat each level and complete the game.
A price war of sorts has broken out among e-reader makers Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Although we won’t take credit for it, a short while after we highlighted the Internet retailer’s reluctance to lower it’s Kindle’s price, the Seattle-based company dropped the e-reader’s price to $189, from $259.
Actually, the move likely was more in response to an earlier action by Barnes & Noble, which dropped its 3G Nook to $199 from $259. The bookseller also introduced a Wi-Fi only version of its e-reader for $149. As one onlooker commented, the price of an e-reader dropped $100 in a single day, putting the price of a single-purpose e-reader on par with an MP3 player.
iPads: easy pickings? CC-licensed. Thanks to twid on Flickr.
Twice in one week, enterprising thieves hit Apple’s Upper West Side store to snag shipments of iPads.
The low weight and easy portability of the iDevice makes it an easy target: in both incidents, thieves grabbed boxes of five iPads and ran away with them in broad daylight.
“Thieves are opportunists, and it’s the hottest gadget out there,” a police source told the New York Post. The first theft occurred mid-morning on Tuesday. A man swiped a box with five iPads while a delivery driver was stacking cartons outside his truck. The thief zipped down the street on foot and has not been caught.
Two days later, a thieving duo snatched another box of five iPads taking advantage of momentary distraction from a UPS driver. One of the pair asked the driver for directions, the other snagged a box and took off on foot down Broadway.
“We definitely have a heightened security presence,” said a worker at the store at Broadway and 67th Street. To improve the chances of getting them on the shelves, even the Apple employees are kept in the dark about delivery times. “Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. We don’t know when we’re getting more in,” an employee said.
Want a splash of color for your external Mac, iPad or iPhone battery? HyperMac has just updated their line to include an attractive array of new hues, modeled by the strange gang of human peacocks pictured above.
The batteries are available in four different sizes offering between sixty and two hundred and twenty watt hours of juice for your favorite Apple portable: at the higher end, that’s enough to fully juice your iPhone fifty-two times, power your iPad for 100 hours and drive your MacBook from between 20-35 additional hours, but even the $199.95 entry level model will deliver a third of that performance.
If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS or third-gen iPod Touch and you’ve upgraded to iOS 4, you’re probably ready to give multitasking a try. Good news, then: Pandora have just updated the iPhone app to version 3.1, which now supports background audio playback under iOS 4.
Because of the same RIAA licensing nonsense that keeps Spotify out of the U.S. App Store, Pandora is only available in the United States right now, but if you’re a yank who wants to experience the same background functionality in Pandora that you get already in the default iPod app, you can download the app for free here.
Still haven’t gotten that geeky dad of yours anything for Father’s Day? Here’s a late last-minute suggestion: Run out to your local bookshop and grab a copy of 62 Projects To Make With A Dead Computer. It’s a sort of $15 Maker Faire for dummies that’ll keep him busy for months, get rid of some of that junk lying around and maybe save him a little moolah in the process.
