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This Week’s Must-Have iOS Apps: Documents, Finish, Poster & More [Roundup]

Documents, a great new file manager and media player for the iPad — which won’t cost you a penny — kicks off this week’s must-have apps roundup. Finish, a task management app designed for procrastinators, is also featured — along with Poster, the best WordPress client for iOS. We’ve also got a great new camera app that’ll help you take awesome photos on your iOS devices, without applying filters and effects.

Documents — iPad (Free)

Documents is a terrific file manager, document editor, and media player for the iPad that promises to be unlike any other app you’ve downloaded. “You will use it constantly, at home, office, university or on the road, every single day,” Readdle says. And what’s more, Documents is completely free.

Documents is “the most capable application on your iPad,” replacing standalone document viewer, PDF readers, download managers, and media players. It rolls all of these things into one in a package that’s beautifully designed and easy to use. Although Documents just hit the App Store today, I’ve been testing it out over the past few weeks, and I only have great things to say about it.

Finish — iPhone ($0.99)

Finish is a task management app for the iPhone that’s been designed with procrastinators in mind. If you’re on of those people who spends hours watching YouTube videos or browsing Facebook when you should be finishing your college assignment, then Finish is for you. “Finish gets in your face when you need it, stays out of the way when you don’t, and effortlessly keeps you focused [on] the only thing that matters: completing important tasks.”

Entering a task is a simple as giving it a name and a date, and Finish’s unique “timeframes-based” interface automatically displays your most important tasks at the top. Finish also offers push notifications, so you can’t forget what needs to be done if you don’t open the app one day.

Poster — Universal ($2.99)

Poster, arguably the best WordPress blogging app for iOS, received a major new update this week, which adds a ton of new features and improvements. In addition to support for custom post types, version 2.0 brings the ability to edit a post’s excerpt and insert images anywhere you like, and the option to remove a post’s featured image. You can also set posts to “sticky,” and re-order your blogs within the Poster interface.

If you haven’t got Poster yet, and you’re a WordPress user, I highly recommend you check it out. I’ve tried a whole host of blogging apps for iOS, and this one’s by far my favorite. It’s got a great, clean user interface; lots of great features (even more now), and it’s fast and stable.

PureShot — Universal ($1.99)

PureShot is a new (filter-free) camera app for iOS that promises to help you “capture digital photographs with the highest possible technical integrity.” In has a simple, easy to use interface that’s highly configurable, so you can tailor its features to suit you. PureShot doesn’t process any of your images on your device — it allows you to do that yourself as you see fit.

Features include a choice of HI_Quality JPEG, MAX-Quality JPEG, or dRAW TIFF output; tap-to-focus and set-and-and lock; 4:3 and 1:1 image ratios; real-time ISO, shutter-speed, and GPS readouts; night mode; 6X digital zoom; and lots, lots more.

What’s Your Favorite?

So that concludes our list of this week’s must-have iOS apps. If you’ve picked up something that you think we should have included, be sure to let us know about it in the comments.

Jordan Ostreff
20 януари 2013

Лични

Learn Basic Programming With The Coding For Dummies Course [Deals]

Derek Sivers recently wrote a piece about how he believes everyone should learn basic programming, but where do you start? What school should you go to? What book is the best? What website will offer the best resources? Cult of Mac Deals is here to help – no matter whether it’s a course for you or for a child out there that you know would eat up a coding course.

The Coding for Dummies Course you’ll receive over 216 lectures and 7 hours of content. Normally this video course would cost you $597, but now you can get it for only $69 – a savings of 88%!

The average computer programmer makes 78k a year and there will always be a need for programmers. The only problem is that most (if not all) educational courses are not tailored towards the learning styles of children. Most of the documentation is geared towards people over 18. This course shows kids how to code by adapting the material to their learning styles. There are animated lectures, informative screencasts, and tests.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this course:

The basics of computer programming HTML CSS JavaScript

Whether you’re an adult with no technical experience whatsoever or there’s a child in your life that you know would love to get a head start on learning how to code, this course is the ideal way to go.

Your instructor for this course is John Bura, who has been programming games since 1997 (and teaching since 2002). John’s philosophy is simple: to teach the very basics of computer programming in an extremely simple and understandable way so anyone (even if you’re 90) can learn the magic behind what’s driving the world these days. He is the owner of the game development studio Mammoth Interactive, a company that produces games for the XBOX 360, iPhone, iPad, Android, HTML 5, ad-games and more. He most certainly has got the goods to help you get well on your way to an education in coding.

With this course you’re not only going to get a great start when it comes to learning code, but you’ll also get unlimited access to this course on Udemy forever (even on their new iPad app), and a 30 day money back guarantee. So what have you got to lose?

Pick up The Coding for Dummies Course today at the Cult of Mac Deals page for just $69 and start your – or a child’s – journey to coding the right way today!

#mc_embed_signup { background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } Want More Freebies And Deals On Mac Software And Apple Gear? Sign Up Below!

Jordan Ostreff
19 януари 2013

Лични

Fun Game: Shopping Spree In A Tropical Paradise

Every week Mac Games and More (http://www.macgamesandmore.com/) features a fun, casual, Mac computer game to try out for free and play over the weekend. This week, travel to the tropics and help out an island with your brilliant, fast-paced time management skills. Download it now

Shop-n-Spree: Shopping Paradise (time management) – Forget real-life shopping sprees, how about saving your coveted paychecks instead and going on a different kind of shop-til-you-drop adventure? With this quick-paced time management game, help out your tropical island paradise community that has fallen on hard times. You’ll get them out of the red and into lots of much needed cash. Download it now

Jordan Ostreff
19 януари 2013

Лични

This Week’s Must-Have iOS Games: Temple Run 2, Momonga Pinball Adventures, Infestor [Roundup]

Temple Run 2 gets this week’s must-have games roundup up and running (see what I did there?). It’s accompanied by a unique pinball game that features the cutest flying squirrel you’ve ever seen, an awesome new platformer from Ravenous Games, and a title that originally made its debut on the Apple II all those years ago.

Temple Run 2 — Universal (Free)

Temple Run 2 offers a number of improvements that are sure to delight the millions of gamers addicted to the title, including “beautiful new graphics” and “gorgeous new organic environments.” It also introduces new obstacles, more power-ups and achievements, and four characters each with special powers.

The basics of the game, however, remain the same — you still control a character who’s running for their life by using various swipe and tilt gestures. What didn’t need changing or improving has been left well alone, so at heart, this is still the endless runner we’ve all grown to love.

Momonga Pinball Adventures — Universal ($0.99)

Momonga is a unique pinball game in which you join Momo, a cute flying squirrel, on an epic adventure to save his tribe. A band of evil owls have turned the Momonga village to ashes and kidnapped all of its inhabitants. Momo barely survived the attack, and now it’s up to him to save his neighbors.

Yes, this is a pinball game. Momo curls into a little ball and rolls around, smashing the enemies that get in his path. There are 9 levels to play through, with 45 challenges to collect, plus one epic boss battle.

Infestor — Universal ($0.99)

Infestor is an awesome little puzzle platformer created by the award-winning studio Ravenous Games, which is also responsible for titles like Beatdown!, Burger Cat, League of Evil, and Random Heroes. In this game, you play the Infestor, a strange green monster, who must reach the exit in each level by taking over the the enemies and controlling their bodies.

The tricky bit is that each “human” has a special ability, which you’ll need to take advantage of to overcome all sorts of obstacles. There are 60 levels to enjoy, plus a whole host of Game Center achievements to collect.

Lode Runner Classic — iPhone ($2.99)

Remember Lode Runner for the Apple II ? It’s back and better than ever before on iOS. Lode Runner Classic combines all 150 levels from the original title with new visuals and features that are specifically optimized for the iPhone. You can magnify the screen around your character to get a closer look at the things around, set the play speed, and compete on worldwide leaderboards.

For those who aren’t familiar with Lode Runner, it’s a terrific little platform game that takes place in maze-like static levels, where the player must dodge enemies while running and climbing to reach stacks of gold. Unlike other platform games, jumping is not allowed, and although you get a gun, shooting enemies is forbidden. You can blast through objects to get to where you need to go, however.

What’s Your Favorite?

So that concludes our list of this week’s must-have iOS games. If you’ve picked up something that you think we should have included, be sure to let us know about it in the comments.

Jordan Ostreff
19 януари 2013

Лични

Opera Takes On Mobile Web Browsing With Ice For Android And iOS

Lookin’ good, Opera.

In an internal video released today by web browser company, Opera, the initial programmer of the new concept showed off a beta of the new Opera browser scheduled to go live for iOS and Android in February of this year.

The video, posted on Pocket Lint, shows a browser that looks to redefine the typical mobile browsing experience, with icons instead of tabs and gestures instead of buttons. The focus is on the user and using rich web applications, like Google Maps.

According to Pocket-Lint, CEO Lars Boilesen was also on hand for the staff meeting, and he called for Opera to take it’s game to the next level. “We need to go into a new phase, we need to lift our games on certain areas to ensure we continue to grow,” he said.

He told the gathering that Opera will release the new browser for iOS and Android devices in February, saying, “We need to focus on getting strong products out on iOS and Android. These are the two leading platforms we will focus on… They are the ones phones are being sold for.”

Innovation is a good thing, and the popularity of Google’s Chrome web browser on both iOS and Android shows there is a consumer desire for web browsing experiences that don’t come built in, like the Safari browser on iOS.

Here’s hoping that Opera can take this intriguing gestural concept to fruition by next month; we’re excited to check it out.

Source: Pocket Lint
Via: Apple Insider

Jordan Ostreff
19 януари 2013

Лични

Wargame – European Escalation Releases On Mac, Offers Free Download For Previous Game Owners

Looks good, right? Today, Eugen Systems announced the Mac version of popular real-time strategy (RTS) game, Wargame European Escalation, with the trailer above.

In even better news, if you own the PC version of the game and own a Mac, you can download the new Mac version for free. How’s that for Mac-friendly?

Released last year for Windows, Wargame European Escalation lets you play one of several national factions across the Warsaw Pact (Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia) and NATO (United States, UK, France, West Germany) and use any of the associated historical units to play across four individual operational campaigns that chronicle actual historical events that came close to starting a war between the two superpowers.

Wargame European Escalation is available on Steam for PC and now Mac for a reasonable $34.99. It has four free expansion DLC packs as well, so there’s bound to be a ton of content to digest if you pick it up now.

Source: Steam

Jordan Ostreff
19 януари 2013

Лични

The Inside Story Of How Apple Bought Music Startup Lala, And Then Bought It Again

Lala was the pioneer in online music streaming before services like Spotify and Pandora really took off. If you Googled a song pre-2009, a Lala link was the first result. Founded in 2005, Lala underwent some business model changes until it became a full-fledged music streaming site. A partnership with Google’s Music Beta and good connections with the record industry allowed Lala to grow and gain attention from bigger tech companies.

It made sense for Apple to buy Lala in December of 2009. Lala.com was shut down in May of 2010, and Apple has since introduced products like iTunes Match. When Lala was bought, we all knew that Apple had paid around $80 million for the small startup. Now the inside story of how the deal was reached over dinner at Steve Jobs’s house has surfaced.

Aubrey Johnson is a designer who worked with Lala people after the Apple acquisition. He explains how Lala founder Bill Nguyen had received offers from both Google and Nokia, but the bids were too low. Nguyen pulled a few strings and got a meeting with Apple to ask for a higher offer. Nguyen knew that Lala’s good ranking in Google search would ultimately undermine iTunes sales. The top executives at Apple granted him an audience:

In late November, Nguyen was seated at the dinner table in Steve Job’s home on Waverly St in Palo Alto. Also present were Eddy Cue and Tim Cook and other Apple executives. Steve led the conversation while eating a beet salad:

“I’m going to give you a number, Bill, and if you like it, let’s do it and just be done with this whole thing. Okay?” Bill agreed.

Jobs passed a piece of paper to Nguyen and Bill nodded. The deal was done.

Lala was bought out for $80 million plus an additional $80 million in retention bonuses and stock options for employees that stayed on at Apple through the acquisition. Not a bad deal given that Nokia had only offered $11 million.

The story gets better. Soon after the deal was closed, Bill Nguyen left Apple to start Color, the photo sharing app that generated a lot of buzz back in 2011. Nguyen’s employees from his Lala days were loyal, and many engineers left millions in stock options at Apple to work at Color. After Color failed, Apple swooped in and acqhired around 20 employees back for $2-$5 million. So Apple got the talent back from its Lala purchase at a significantly cheaper price than it would have cost if the engineers would have just stayed on at Apple in the first place. Brilliant.

Apple is rumored to launch a Spotify-like ‘iRadio’ streaming service this year if negotiations can be reached with record labels. What are the odds that Lala engineers have been working on the project?

Source: Aubrey Johnson

Jordan Ostreff
18 януари 2013

Лични

This Old G4 iMac Can Now Run Mountain Lion Thanks To Its New Ivy Bridge Processor [Video]

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Jonathan Berg, aka “Dremel Junkie,” shares our love for the iMac G4. Rather than letting his old G4 waste away in some landfill, he decided to resurrect it by putting an Intel Ivy Bridge processor inside and using some hackery to get it running OS X Mountain Lion.

Even though there’s not much space inside the G4′s base, Jonathan was able to squeeze in a DVD burner, a Core i3 processor, and some other new internal upgrades without compromising the original design. If you’re not afraid of a soldering iron and a Dremel Moto tool, Jonathan made a video explaining how to create your own Ivy Bridge iMac G4 that you can watch below.

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Source: YouTube

Via: TUAW

Jordan Ostreff
18 януари 2013

Лични

Transfer Google Contacts To iCloud Simply And Easily [iOS Tips]

Tired of welcoming our Google overlords? Have a free Gmail account, and just lose your contact sync via Exchange? Well, why not put your contacts over on iCloud for easy synchronization across all your Apple products? Makes sense to me.

Here’s how to do it.

Launch your favorite web browser, whether that’s Safari or Chrome or Firefox, and head to your Gmail contacts. Click on the More button above your contacts list, and then choose Export. Click on The Group and then choose a group of contacts you’d like to export. You can also just export All Contacts, or Select a bunch of contacts before you hit the More button.

However you choose to do it, click on the vCard format down below and then hit the blue Export button. You’ll get a .vcf file download, and it will go wherever your downloaded files go.

Next, head on over to iCloud.com and login with your iTunes account. Click on the Contacts icon, and then click that little gear icon in the lower left of your Contacts page. Choose Import vCard from the menu that pops up, navigate to the .vcf file you saved from above, and click the Open button. Boom–just like that, your contacts from Google will go to iCloud.

On your iOS device, tap the Settings app icon to launch it, then tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Click on the iCloud account there, and make sure that the Contacts toggle is set to ON.

Now you can have a Google-free contacts experience, if that’s your thing.

Source: 148Apps

Jordan Ostreff
18 януари 2013

Лични

Al Gore Buys $29 Million Worth Of Apple Stock Ahead Of Next Week’s Earnings

No one tell former Vice President Al Gore that it’s a bad time to buy AAPL. He just exercised a big chunk of his Apple stock options, walking off with $29 million worth of shares at a steep discount.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Al Gore exercised options to purchase $59,000 shares of AAPL for just pennies on the dollar.

Right now, at APPL’s current stock price of just $498.52 (down from a $700 high last year), those shares would cost around $29 million. Al Gore, however, got them for just $7.475 a share, or around $441,000 for the whole bundle.

Quite the steep discount, but Al Gore, a longtime board member of Apple, Inc. is entitled. With Apple’s earnings set to be reported next week, Gore’s move might prove a canny one. Apple’s stock is perceived by many right now as being chronically undervalued by Wall Street. Moreover, Apple share price tends to plummet before earnings announcements, only to rise afterwards.

Via: CNET

Jordan Ostreff
18 януари 2013