Year: 2014

CamText: add a live camera to the Messages app background

CamText is a new jailbreak tweak that lets users text using the stock Messages app with a live camera background. The most obvious use for a tweak like this is to provide its users with a safe way to text while walking down a busy street.

Since the camera provides a live view of a user's surroundings using the Messages app background, it's possible to keep one eye on an impending obstacle, and another eye on the ongoing conversation. While I believe it's pretty sad that it's come to this—we can't even look up while crossing the street like a normal person—it's hard to deny the idea's usefulness in the face of the circumstances. 

How to add now-playing details to the iPhone’s status bar

PlayMe is a super simple jailbreak tweak with one goal in mind—it allows you to add now-playing information to the iPhone's status bar, such as album artist, and song title. PlayMe works well with the stock Music app, but it also plays nice with third-party applications like Spotify.

As you play music, PlayMe will rotate between the album artist name and the name of the song repeatedly. There are no options to configure to change the way the tweak displays the now-playing text, it's totally an install and go affair. Have a look at our video walkthrough after the break for a closer look into how PlayMe works.

Fleeting: an awesome jailbreak tool for speed reading

Fleeting is an Action Menu add-on that allows you to select a block of text for speed reading. It contains its own interface that displays one word from the block of text at a time in quick succession. It's done in a way that makes the text entirely legible, even when moving at hundreds of words per minute.

If you've ever been intrigued by the idea of speed reading, then you should check out Fleeting. Have a glance inside at our full video walkthrough for more details.

Apple confirms WWDC 2014 kicking off June 2

Apple on Thursday confirmed via a press release that its annual summer pilgrimage for developers, Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), will be kicking off on Monday, June 2, at San Francisco’s Moscone West.

The five-day conference will focus on "the future of iOS and OS X,", indicating that Apple will give us a preview of iOS 8 and the next iteration of its desktop operating system for Macs, OS X.

There will be more than a hundred technical sessions and over a thousand Apple engineers will be available to registered developers to help them integrate new technologies and fine tune their apps.

Apple will also hold its traditional Apple Design Awards to showcase the best apps from the past year and of course hold the keynote on the first day to update us on latest business metrics and hopefully announce "exciting new products" CEO Tim Cook has been teasing for months now...

‘Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance’ hits the App Store

Wow, it has been an absolute monster day for iOS game releases. First there was 'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft,’ which hit App Stores in select countries, then FTL for iPad came out, and now we have 'Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance.'

Games Workshop's Storm of Vengeance is a lane strategy game for PC and mobile devices set in the dark, gothic universe of Warhammer 40K. Players can play as both Dark Angels and Orks, tasked with either defending their planet, or destroying it...

‘Faster Than Light’ for iPad now available in the App Store

Last week we told you that the popular PC/Mac title Faster Than Light would be making its way to the iPad soon, and today, the game landed in the App Store. You can now play the roguelike-like real-time strategy game on your Apple-branded tablet.

Even if this doesn't look like your cup of tea, FTL is worth checking out. Early reviews of the game have been glowing, with some awarding it 5 out of 5 stars, and others calling it a potential Game of the Year candidate. Keep reading for a full overview...

‘Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff’ landing on iOS April 10

It looks like the highly anticipated Family Guy project from Fox and TinyCo is set to be released next week. At a launch event in Los Angeles last night, the two firms announced that 'Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff' will be landing on iOS on April 10.

First revealed in December of last year, the game will be set in the infamous town of Quahog and feature elements of resource management, with multiple story lines. It looks similar to Fox's other hit TV series-turned-game: The Simpsons Tapped Out...

‘Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’ for iPad launches in select countries

Back in March, Blizzard launched its digital card trading game 'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft' on the Mac, and as promised, it has brought the game to iOS. The title soft-launched for iPad last night, and is now available in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand App Stores.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, for those unfamiliar with it, is a strategy card game set in the 'Warcraft' universe. Players compete in 1-on-1 battles—either against the computer or other users via Battle.net—in an effort to grow the size and power of their card collections...

Microsoft finally unveils its Siri competitor ‘Cortana’

It's been nearly three years since Apple unveiled Siri on its iPhone 4s, and Microsoft finally has its answer to the digital assistant: Cortana. Named after a virtual character in the company's popular Halo gaming franchise, the feature is powered by Bing and offers a mix of Google Now-ish and Siri-like characteristics.

We first got a glimpse of Cortana earlier this year courtesy of a developer leak, but Microsoft officially unveiled her this morning at its Build Developer Conference in San Francisco. The assistant will ship alongside several other new features in the Windows Phone 8.1 update, expected to launch in the next few months...

DEAD Room – The Dark One review: welcome to your worst nightmare

My first discovery of the fabled “Slender Man” happened a few years ago. A friend showed me YouTube videos of found footage starring a tall, thin figure with a featureless face. In the videos, the electronics of the camera would fail every time Slender Man would appear on screen. Although I knew it was make believe, it still creeped me out.

Dead Room – The Dark One is a play on the fictitious figure. Only this mysterious entity looks and moves differently. The gameplay is similar to other Slender Man survival titles, but seems to have no ending, except a bad one…

Shapematic turns your iPhone into a 3D scanner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmb5BcBZhdM

Shapematic is a new app that just launched in the App Store, and that aims to turn your iPhone into a 3D scanner. Simply snap a few pictures under different angles of the object you want to scan, and let the app work its software magic. The result will be a three-dimensional reconstruction of the object. The app also includes a feature that lets you edit your 3D photos to remove little flaws that might have showed up in the process.

The 3D models created are printing ready, and you can request a 3D print directly from the application to get the three-dimensional model shipped to you.

Download Shapematic in the App Store for $0.99.

Amazon unveils its Apple TV competitor: meet the $99 Fire TV set-top box

Amazon has just taken the wraps off its new media-streaming device designed to compete with the likes of Apple's $99 Apple TV hockey puck, Roku devices and other media-streaming boxes available to cable-cutters today.

It's rather predictably called the Fire TV in a nod to the successful Kindle Fire tablet brand, costs $99 and runs a forked Android version code-named 'Mojito'.

Powered by a quad-core processor with 2GB RAM and a dedicated graphics processor, the set-top box is capable of streaming full HD 1080p resolution video (1,920-by-1,080 pixels) and Amazon claims it's three times more powerful than the Apple TV.

It supports 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound via HDMI and optical audio-out, has dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, comes with a Bluetooth remote and ties into Amazon's vast ecosystem of digital content licensed from Hollywood majors and broadcasters.

I don't think Apple should be concerned because the Fire TV's user interface appears clunky (I even like Chromecast's better) and it's hard to see much that isn't already out there, though I have no doubt in my mind that the Fire TV is here to stay and tie existing Amazon customers even deeper into its ecosystem.

Read on for the full reveal...