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I used to mock Apple years ago because they advertised Apple as the fun alternative to stodgy, boring Windows.

The idea that Apple was fun and Microsoft was not was a misdirection at best. Windows was the biggest games platform and Xbox was the best console game (in my opinion). Apple had no games to speak of.

Five years ago, all that changed: Apple launched the iOS App Store, and it quickly became the biggest games platform ever, now making twice the money as portable game console market. Apple’s App Store hit right when the casual and mobile games market was ready to take off in a big way.

The Android market is no slouch in the gaming arena, either, and will soon overtake the portable game console market as well.

But the mobile gaming market is still in its infancy. The Android gaming scene is about yesterday’s games — isolated, causal time-killing games, for the most part. So to take it to the next level, Google this week announced Google Play Games Services.

There are two gigantic opportunities that are potentially unique to Google: Multi-device gaming and gaming as a mainstream spectator sport.

Multi-device Gaming

The biggest coming trend in gaming is multi-device games, where one part of the game is happening on one gadget, and another component on another. For example, the battlefield is on the TV, the tablet is a controller with contextual information and the phone is a communication device.

Google live-demoed this killer feature at Google I/O, but can also try it yourself with any mobile Chrome browser by going to http://g.co/racer (the idea is that you combine two or more phones and tablets to form one racetrack). This is, of course, a rudimentary and somewhat gimmicky application compared to what’s coming over the next year or two.

Google is in the best position by far to own this space, not because only Google can build the technology, but because Google Game Services has by far the biggest potential audience. Google not only covers the world’s largest operating system (Android has 900 million users now), but also iOS and the web, and this coverage will enable cross-platform unity for multi-device games.

And don’t forget that Android has a TV component.

Android is also great for ad-hoc, special-purpose devices that we can’t imagine today but which aren’t exactly phones, tablets, laptops, PCs or TVs. Companies will be special game consoles that enable play against people with phones — that sort of thing.

Gaming as a Spectator Sport

More devices and more players is one part of Google’s advantage. The other is Google+.

Gaming on Google+ got off to a bad start with Google+ Games, which really appeared to be a solution for Facebook gaming companies looking for new growth. They didn’t find growth on Google+ because the last thing the Google+ community wanted was the Facebook experience. Google announced plans to kill Google+ Games at the end of June.

Like everything else, gaming has gone social. And the social aspect has become increasingly important. But gamers are still anti-social, as a group. The reason is that social services like Xbox Live exist in their own hermetically sealed bubble, cut off from the non-gaming community.

Google announced this week that Google+ will be the place for Google Games match-ups, leaderboards and all the rest.

Offering an open, multi-OS API for gaming on mobile and Chrome and then doing the social stuff on Google is absolutely the right formula for a killer game platform.

It’s right for gamers. But it’s also right for non-gamers.

Adding the Google+ social gaming creates another massive opportunity that Google hasn’t even mentioned yet: gaming as a spectator sport.

As gamers organize, rank and communicate (a.k.a. trash-talk) with each other on Google+, this activity will be as private or public as gamers want it to be. And the best gamers will want it to be public. Game rivalries and tournaments will go viral, snowballing over time into a new cultural phenomenon: Gaming as a mainstream form of entertainment for non-players.

I predict that epic tournaments will be organized and live game play thrown open for public entertainment. Google’s new system will turn Google+ into a virtual stadium for massive gaming tournaments, with the best players becoming rock stars.

This sort of thing is already happening as gaming tournaments in the US and Asia are becoming increasingly popular on TV. But TV is obviously a lousy way to follow a game tournament. Fans will prefer to watch the games where the gamers are — on Google+.

This new aspect of gaming — gaming as a mainstream spectator sport — will drive new interest in specific games, as non-players will be inspired to get into gaming in general and Google Games in particular.

Right now few associate Google with gaming. But I think the company is ideally positioned to become the biggest gaming powerhouse ever because it’s open, it has the most potential users, it’s on the most devices and it’s using a social network where non-players can become fans and spectators.

It’s too early to call Game Over for Apple and the consoles. But Google just went straight to the next level, didn’t they?

(Image courtesy of AllThingsD)

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So thin, so light, so…easy to fill with cruft.

Saving space on your Mac’s hard drive is more important than ever, especially if you use one with a faster but smaller solid state drive in it, like my Macbook Air. Being able to manage your space wisely is the key here, and once you’ve done the obvious things, like pare down your Applications folder and delete all those iMovie source files, it’s time to get trick, and a bit advanced.

Here’s five things that you can do to get rid of hard drive bloat, if you dare.

Delete User Cache Files

Saving space on your Mac hard drive is a key strategy, especially when you’re using a Macbook Air, with it’s strictly solid state drive (SSD). Even if you’re using a desktop Mac with a hard drive that seemed like “plenty of space” when you bought it, there will come a time when you’ll be looking to save some of it for more data. Why not get rid of the non-essential stuff on your Mac’s hard drive?

When you delete apps to help recover disk space, they can leave user cache files behind. These are the files that help improve the performance of OS X and various apps that are installed on your Mac. If you’re no longer using an app, you can delete these files to free up some space. Here’s how.

In the Finder, press Command-Shift-G or click on the Go menu, selecting Go To Folder. In the resulting field, type or paste ~/Library/Caches/. This will bring up the folder that contains the user caches. Once there, you’ll want to sort the list by size, which means you’ll want to set up that window to calculate all the sizes of files and folders.

Go to the View menu and choose Show View Options, or hit Command-J on your keyboard. Click the checkbox next to Calculate All Sizes and then close the View window. Your Mac will now show a number for everything in that Finder window, including folders. Now, if you don’t already, set the window to List view, either in the View menu or with a Command-2 on the keyboard.

You’ll now see all the biggest cache files near the top of the list (if you only see the smaller files at the top, click on Size again at the top of the column), and you can delete stuff that you no longer need. Spotify can have a bigger user cache file, as can some gaming apps.

Be careful not to remove anything you think you might need, of course. If you delete something that an app you still use needs, you might see some weird stuff go on with it.

Via: OS X Daily

Delete Unwanted Speech Voices From Your Mac

Hard drive space is at a premium these days, with files getting larger and solid state drives (SSD) becoming more affordable and ubiquitous. I’m typing on a Macbook Air right now, and making sure I don’t clutter up the drive with unnecessary files is important to me.

One way to do this is to get rid of the voices that Mac OS X uses for text-to-speech. These files can take up a decent amount of space, which may well be why iOS only allows the one onboard, now that I think about it.

Anyway, if you’re not using those text-to-speech voices, you might as well clear them off your drive and save some space. Here’s how.

If you want to get rid of the whole kit and caboodle at once, launch Terminal from the Applications folder, the dock, or with an app launching system, like Alfred. Type or paste the following command:

cd /System/Library/Speech/

This will change the directory (cd) you’re focusing on to the one in which the speech files are contained. To delete them all, simply type or paste the following:

sudo rm -rf Voices/*

This will dump every single text-to-speech voice on your system, so don’t do it if you want to keep one or more voices. In that case, navigate to the /System/Library/Speech/Voices/ folder on your hard drive and delete the voices you aren’t going to use, like Cello, or Bahh. Because, really, how often do you have your Mac read to you in the sound of string instruments or sheep?

Via: OS X Daily

Check The Application Support Folder For Steam Game Files

I suppose since I’m a gamer, I assume everyone else is. If you’re not, or you don’t use the fantastic cross-platform digital gaming portal, Steam, this tip won’t apply to you. Check out the last couple of tips for great space saving ideas, instead. Or, heck, read a review or two on Cult of Mac. I hear they’re pretty good.

For you Steam gamers looking to save some space on your hard drive, there’s one place you should really look.

Go into the Finder, and open the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder. INside that folder will be a Steam folder, which may have a ton of files sitting around from games you don’t play anymore. Be sure to Calculate All Sizes in the View menu when viewing the Steam folder here, and sort by Size. You’ll see which games are weighing your hard drive down, and you’ll know which ones you can dump (these are the ones you don’t play any more).

When I checked my Steam Application Support folder, I found about 30 Gb of data in there, much of which is from games I don’t actually play anymore, like Civilization, or Sanctum. Deleting these files gave me a ton more space than I thought possible.

Another place to check is the main Application Support folder. Not all games, even Steam games, put their big files in the Steam folder. There may even be app support items in here from apps you deleted a long time ago. Take a look through this folder and dump what you can. Remember, though, that if you delete files a current app actually needs, you’ll probably break it and need to reinstall.

I found some great stuff in this folder, like support files for EVE Online, a game I haven’t played in way too long. Deleted!

Via: OS X Daily

Delete System Logs And QuickLook Cache Files

There are many files that help make your system usable, but they can build up over time. System logs, for example, keep track of usage, errors, and services running on your Mac, but unless you look at these often via an app like Console, you’ll probably not need a ton of log files taking up space on your Mac, especially if you have one with a low-volume SSD.

QuickLook cache files make your Mac feel zippy when you hit the spacebar to preview files in the Finder or Open/Save dialogs. If you can stand a bit of a wait to do this, deleting these files can save you some space as well.

Put together, you might save a decent amount of space on your hard drive, so give it a shot. Here’s how.

First up, launch Terminal from the Applications folder or your Dock, whichever is easier for you. Then, type or paste the following command into the resulting window:

sudo rm -rf /private/var/log/*

This should clean out the system logs up to and including when you run the command, so you might want to do this on a regular basis if you find it frees up a ton of space.

Now, close that Terminal window and open another. Type or paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo rm -rf /private/var/folders/

This will get rid of the QuickLook cache files, which will then start to accumulate again. This might be another regular task if space is at a premium on your Mac, and if the speed hit to QuickLook doesn’t bother you.

Each of the commands above will require you to enter your administrator password.

Via: OS X Daily

Disable SafeSleep Mode On Your Mac

Warning – this tip is fairly advanced. Use it at your own risk.

There’s a feature that debuted back in 2005, called SafeSleep. Basically, it’s a hibernation mode designed to save the current state of your running Mac, so that it can start up exactly the same way you left it when you put the Mac to sleep, even if the battery runs out and it shuts down completely.

In OS Lion, Apple introduced two new features, called Autosave and Resume which mirrors this functionality. Turning off SafeSleep, then, is really just disabling a duplicate feature. It shouldn’t affect Autosave or Resume if you’re running OS Lion or later, and it could potentially save you gigabytes of hard drive space.

Here’s how to do it, though we caution you not to do this if you’re even slightly uncomfortable with the idea.

To disable the SafeSleep mode altogether, launch Terminal and type or paste the following command:

sudo pmset hibernatemode 0

This turns off hibernation mode, disabling SafeSleep. Now you need to delete the space-eating SafeSleep image file. Type or paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

If your Mac is usually plugged in while sleeping, and you don’t tend to run the battery down below 20 percent, you’re never really using SafeSleep mode, anyway, so disabling it to save some space makes sense. Macs with a non-SSD in them take a little bit of time to save the SleepSave image to their hard drives, but the SSD Macs take no time at all. The potential benefit, then, on an SSD-equipped Mac is the storage space.

If you want to re-enable SafeSleep mode again, type or paste this command into Terminal to reset SafeSleep mode:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

And things should be back to the way they were.

Source: TUAW

The eBook publishing price-fixing scandal raised its fugly head again this week when the US Justice Department filed documents in advance of the June 3 trial in New York.

Among those documents was a series of emails and documents in which eBook pricing strategy and tactics are discussed.

An email from late founder and CEO Steve Jobs to News Corporation’s James Murdoch got all the attention. (The email itself was harmless but parts of it printed out of context sounded vaguely conspiratorial and old-boys clubbish.)

To me, the scandal is buried in those emails and testimony records. We learned that Apple used its control over app approvals to exert pressure on companies for reasons totally unrelated to the apps.

Does this bother you? It should.

When Apple was negotiating with Random House and the companies were disagreeing about pricing, Jobs threatened the publisher’s CEO by saying they would “suffer a loss of support from Apple” if the company continued to resist Apple’s terms, according to that CEO. Two months later, the CEO said that Apple threatened to block an eBook application by Random House because they had not reached a deal. (I don’t know if that book was Nigella’s Quick Collection, pictured, but that is a Random House title.)

A subsequent email sent by Eddy Cue to Jobs said that Random House agreed to Apple’s terms in part because Cue “prevented an app from Random House from going live in the app store.”

(Ironically, I believe these emails are part of Apple’s defense to show that its relationships with publishers was contentious rather than conspiratorial.)

If court documents are portraying this accurately, it means that in 2010, at least, Apple was willing to use its control over the app store to give the company an unfair advantage in unrelated business deals.

Apple’s History of Arbitrary App Store Decisions

Some blocking of apps is more legitimate — or, at least, determined by published rules. For example, Apple banned a DUI checkpoint finding app a couple years ago. This violated a very specific section of the Apple guidelines that flat out say that DUI checkpoint apps will be rejected. Fair enough.

The controversial removal by Apple of T&C’s AppGratis from the App Store last month was also probably justifiable.

(Apple not only removed the app, they also pulled the plug on the app’s push notifications to people who had previously installed the app.)

Though critics accused Apple of stifling an alternative view to the App Store, Apple said the app violated two of its terms of service. For a fee, the company would promote a developer’s app by giving apps free or offering in-app content free. This directly violates the App Store requirements around app promotions and direct-marketing push notifications.

Still, the banning caused an international incident. France’s minister for the digital economy (why does the digital economy need a “minister”?), named Fleur Pellerin, slammed Apple in a tweet that falsely said “plenty of apps similar to AppGratis remain” in the App Store. Her involvement has also been criticized as harmful to the very “digital economy” French taxpayers are paying her to boost.

Other app removals exist in a gray area where it appears that Apple just doesn’t like the sound or intent of apps, and pulls them arbitrarily.

Apple this week removed the Bang With Friends app, which existed to enable users to proposition people they follow on Facebook to find out if they are “down to bang.”

Essentially, it works like this: You scan your Facebook friends and choose the ones you would like to “bang.” These choices remain private. But when someone on your “down to bang” list puts you on their “down to bang” list, you’re both notified of this mutually assured attraction.

As far as I can tell, the pulling of this app is arbitrary. I’m guessing Apple just doesn’t like the sound of it.

I would be surprised if Apple considered as one of its corporate missions the need to prevent people from having sex with each other, or the use of apps for people to discover that they are attracted to each other.

I suspect that the baby boomers who run Apple just find language commonly used by millennials in poor taste.

Is a generation gap a good reason to exert their control over an ecosystem?

Apple, in fact, has a long history of banning apps based on them being in poor taste.

An app called iBoobs was banned, even though there was no nudity in it. The app showed a cartoon clothed upper torso of a woman. By shaking the app, the breasts jiggled. So what’s the rule here: You can show female bodies as long as they’re not in motion?

Another banned app showed perfectly static women as Apple prefers, but as part of a strip poker game called Video Strip Poker. They never got naked in the game. Apple doesn’t have a categorical ban on bikinis or underwear. But showing a progression from clothed to underwear was something Apple just didn’t like the idea of, so it was banned.

Another app called I Am Rich was banned by Apple. The app did almost nothing and cost $1,000. The whole point was that the high cost of the app itself was supposed to be a status symbol.

Why Apple Needs Principles and Rules Governing the App Store

Some say Apple’s 30% cut is an outrageously high percentage for apps and content.

Others, such as the Justice Department and the actual eBooks monopoly, Amazon, say Apple’s agency model for books is problematic.

I say both of these charges are baloney. Apple distributes free apps for free and charges what the market will bear for distributing paid apps. The agency model is one in which publishers set the prices and everybody gets paid (including the authors with enough money for the editors, the designers and, yes, the distributor). And when people get paid, books are better. In any event, Apple’s agency model is better than Amazon’s wholesale model, which lets Amazon sell below cost to drive competitors out of the market and take pricing control away from authors and publishers.

I also don’t mind Apple’s strict, somewhat puritanical rules for banning certain apps, because at least they’re published rules which app and content creators can consider in advance before exhausting their resources.

What we should all be bothered by, however, are arbitrary, self-serving abuses of the power Apple wields to pick and choose which apps it likes or doesn’t like or — worst of all — to use its control of the App Store to force business partners to capitulate in negotiations.

If Apple wants to be a standard, global agent for content, we need to trust them. And for us to trust them, they’ve got to earn our trust by creating a rule-governed, level playing field.

In other words, the use of Apple’s platform for content distribution should be a partnership where both parties are bound by agreed-upon rules, not a content dictatorship that functions according to Apple’s whim.

When every other company, such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft publishes policies and user agreements and then violates them, everybody is outraged. So where’s the outrage about Apple’s flagrant and arbitrary control of the App Store?

I think it’s time for Tim Cook to set this right. Yes, the company should make rules for content distribution on its iTunes and iBooks networks.

But just as we content creators follow those rules, so should Apple.

It’s not often that a product stands the test of time, making adjustments when needed to keep up with the speed of the changes that directly impact its use. Roxio Toast 11 Titanium has done just that, and this latest version has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

Roxio Toast 11 Titanium features a new user interface that’s up-to-date, innovative, and intuitive. With newly refined workflows, built-in video tutorials and much more, Toast 11 is the ultimate digital media toolkit for newcomers and experienced users alike – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for a limited time at a price that’s really appealing: only $49.99.

Here are the top features of Roxio Toast 11 Titanium:

• Burn: Toast is the easiest and fastest way to burn your digital media on to CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc for both Mac and PC.
• Capture: Grab video & music from anywhere – the web, portable devices, discs, LPs, or apps running on your Mac.
• Convert: Convert video from the web, TiVo DVRs, EyeTV tuners, Flip Video camcorders, to play on the iPad, iPhone, video game consoles and more.
• -Copy: Copy CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs – even using multiple drives. Copy dual layer DVD-Video discs on to 4.7 GB single-layer discs.
• Share: Publish your video directly to YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo. Toast will even automatically tweet your YouTube and Vimeo links.

From capturing audio and video to converting media to copying, sharing, burning and more, Roxio Toast 11 quickly and easily gets you the media you love…wherever you want it!

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Crescent Moon Games, known for its quality iOS gaming work (Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Dig!), has just released it’s well-regarded iOS game, Ravensword: Shadowlands, for Mac OS X.

Apple gave Ravensword: Shadowlands the Editor’s Choice designation for the iPad version, which can still be purchased for $7 on the iTunes App Store. The Mac OS X Version, enhanced with graphical upgrades like realtime shadows, bloom effects, and high resolution textures and environment models, is in the Mac App Store right now for $13, which seems like a pretty decent deal.

This open-world role playing game has been called the Elder Scrolls of mobile gaming, and the full experience is now on the Mac, in addition to the higher end visuals. There’s a huge 3D high-fantasy-themed world to explore, hundreds of items to find and use, and an epic storyline and soundtrack to immerse you in the gameplay. You’ll get to try out various weapon types like bows, crossbows, hammers, swords, and axes, and get places faster on horses and flying mounts, as well. You’ll fight your way past enemies, counting on your armor upgrades and looted items to keep you safe and vanquish your foes across a ton of multi-part quests.

Sounds like a pretty typical Friday night, no?

If this sounds like fun to you, you could do worse than pick up a gorgeous open-world fantasy RPG for $13 on the Mac App Store, right? Ravensword: Shadowlands requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later to run on your Mac.

Source: Mac App Store

Like an odd cross between Sudoku and a collectible card game, Star Trek Rivals, from Elephant Mouse Games, is out for iOS on the App Store to capture your attention today, on the release date of Star Trek: Into Darkness (have you gotten your tickets, yet?).

The game is free, has all your Star Trek reboot characters in it, and is pretty simple to learn, but hard to master. It plays asynchronously, and you can play a bunch of games at once. Did I mention it’s made out of Star Trek? What’s not to like?

At the start of each match, you get five cards, each with a still from one of the movies on it. The cards have a number on each edge. When you place a card down in the three by three grid and hit Submit, your opponent gets a chance to lay a card down. If the number on his card that touches the edge of your card is higher, he’ll capture your card. Then it’s your turn. Lay down a card with a edge number higher than one of hers, and you’ll capture that card, plus any others that it originally captured, like the board game Othello. Simple, right?

You can purchase new cards in the store with credits you earn through matches, or with Latinum you can purchase as well. It’s a pretty typical free-to-play business model, and not too intrusive. The only annoying things, so far, are the full screen ads that pop up randomly after you submit a card for play. Choose either ad supported or in-app purchase supported, Elephant Mouse, not both.

The strategy starts to make sense after only a few games, and it’s a fun, mindful way of spending a few minutes as you wait in line to see the movie tonight, anyway.

If that’s not enough, the developers have dropped some sweet Star Trek Rivals wallpapers on us, just for you Cult of Mac readers, so go ahead and download your favorite from the images posted below.

Universal app Star Trek Rivals is available in the App Store now for free. Beam up a copy today.

Every year Apple holds its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. It’s the only time out of the year that third-party App Store developers can meet with Apple engineers face-to-face. For the indie dev making apps out of his home office, WWDC is Mecca. Besides the knowledge that can be gained, the conference holds tremendous networking value for many who make their livings from selling apps on the iPhone and Mac.

WWDC 2013 sold out in under two minutes this year, and about 5,000 developers will be descending upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the week-long conference in June. Some new information shows how WWDC attracts quite the international audience.

iOS developer Adam Swinden created a list of hundreds of WWDC 2013 attendees he polled online. “After creating the WWDC 2013 Attendee List I noticed that many of the people introducing themselves on the Glassboard were from all corners of the world,” said Swinden. “So I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see them all plotted on a map.”

The above map shows a small sample of devs who have paid $1600 for a WWDC ticket + airfare to attend next month. Apple will be uploading its session videos for registered developers to watch for free as WWDC is happening, but that hasn’t stopped people from wanting to attend in person.

As you can see, App Store developers are sprinkled throughout pretty much every continent. A larger map is available here.

WWDC isn’t going anywhere soon.

Source: Symbolicating

Have you used the hot new app “Bang With Friends?” No, don’t answer that. Keep your dignity in tact. You can guess what it does.

Apple has suddenly pulled Bang With Friends from the App Store after it went live last week. The app doesn’t contain any explicit content, but it’s obviously not meant for your kid to check out while searching for the latest Angry Birds game.

No word yet on why BWF has been pulled, but the service’s website says that it’s “working with Apple to get back into the App Store shortly.”

Source: Valleywag

Via: CNET

Limelight is a new iPhone app for collecting movies and sharing them with friends. Released earlier this week by indie dev studio 9:42 AM, Limelight is pitched as a ”new way to browse and organize your movie library.”

Inspired by Delicious Library on the Mac, Limelight borrows from similar digital bookshelf apps and adds a unique social element.

I’ve been a proponent of an app called TodoMovies for quite some time because I simply can’t keep track of all the movies I want to see. Limelight takes TodoMovies a step farther by separating movies into “To Watch” and “Watched” lists. Sharing is also a crux of the experience; you are encouraged to follow other users within the app and share your library with friends on Twitter and Facebook.

The app is exquisitely designed, and navigating through the various windows feels fluid. Movies are displayed as poster thumbnails, which can make it occasionally tricky to find a specific movie when the poster isn’t easily recognizable. Trailers are available for each movie along with cast and crew info.

Limelight isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s a well designed app that should appeal to certain movie lovers. Get it now in the App Store for $2.

Source: App Store

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Snapshots is a fantastic idea, and one I can see being used pretty heavily at weddings — or by, say, a gaggle of journalists who shoot an event and might need to pool their images.

The concept is spectacularly simple: Get a bunch of people together, and make sure they’re all running SnapShot on their iPhones; then have them upload all the images or videos they shoot via SnapShot to an “event” that you’ve all picked. Voila! Your BBQ/beach party/wedding/gadget press event has been covered from every conceivable nook and cranny.

The app has all the standard stuff, like posting stuff to Twitter and Facebook, and a comments area for the images and videos. But who cares. It’s the main feature that makes this app so brilliant .

Guys, where did *you* get your tickets?

Seriously, have you gotten your tickets, yet? Star Trek: Into Darkness is coming this weekend, and it looks like the entire US is heading tot he theater to see it, en masse.

Fandango is having a good run of it, claiming that 71 percent of the pre-release ticket sales are coming through it’s very convenient service, with 32 percent of that traffic coming via mobile apps.

Further, they just told me that 15 percent of the mobile ticket sales through the Fandango app are coming from iPhone users, while 6 percent are coming from the Android mobile app.

What’s more is that if you purchase your tickets via Fandango (at least the website, we’re checking on whether this is true for mobile Fandango users), you’ll get a free copy of the 2009 Star Trek film. Wait, 2009?! That is a lot longer ago than I remembered.

Regardless, it’s great to see Fandango doing so well as a service. I can still remember trying to print my tickets at home, finding out I had no ink in the printer, and then going to the ticket window, anyway. I really don’t ever want to not use my iPhone to purchase tickets and get into a film again.

Are you going to Star Trek: Into Darkness this weekend? Have you already bought tickets? Via Fandango? Mobile?

Let us know in the comments below.

Hugs all around, guys!

The band, OK Go, known as much for its fabulously nerdy and complex videos as for its quirky and upbeat pop music, have made an app. Before you go, “meh,” and move on, thinking that this is another one of those record publishing tie-in apps that, really, no one loves but the publicist trying to push it, take a look at the video here.

Get it? These guys made the app. Ok, mostly guitarist Andy Ross, but the other guys certainly had a hand in the app. They definitely appear in the video above. Singer and bassist, Tim Nordwind, had this to say when we asked about the app.

Andy showed me this game about a year ago. And I showed it to five friends, who showed it to five more friends etc…Say The Same Thing connects people in a really fun and unique way that almost makes me feel like I am both psychic and having a super good time all at once.

You heard it here first, folks. Tim feels psychic and super good when he plays his good buddy Andy’s app. Right?

Andy also told us a bit about the app, too, saying,

We knew the game was really fun to play in person so I just decided to start working a simple, barebones app version in my spare time. I sent this to the band and our friends and we were playing it constantly… it was almost more exciting to play as app. So we just decided to make it a real thing and share it with everyone.

Yes, they made it a real thing. So exciting.

Can you picture it? The band, touring endlessly in buses, jets, and on trains. Waiting backstage and in hotel rooms. Just dying to pass the time. And, being the nerdy smart guys they are, they came up with a game they could play. Like an intelligent rock-scissors-paper where everyone wins! That’s Say the Same Thing in a nutshell, and you really should check out the app and support these successful rockstars in conquering yet another media format.

Say The Same Thing is available as a universal app in the iTunes App Store right now, for free. Ok? Go!

So, the game we’ve been telling you about since before it even had a name is out now for Mac, PC, and Linux, and it looks as good as the developers promised. It’s a sequel to Anomaly Warzone Earth, originally released on iOS, and it will only cost you $13.49 for the first week after launch. You can grab it on Steam, or Anomaly2Game should you so desire. And really, it’s a pretty desirable game.

Warsaw, Poland-based 11 bit studios kicked things off last February when they announced a mystery game that you could purchase before you even knew what it was, and then announced the name of the game not too long after.

Well, here we are, and there it is, ready for you to grab for less than a decently sized pizza at 10 percent off the eventual retail price of $15.

This new tower offense / tower defense game makes the jump to Mac and other computers from iOS, bringing along some great gameplay. You’ll be fighting off a new horde of aliens who have overrun the Earth, itself a cold and barren planet in the wake of the invasion. Humanity is almost extinct, and its up to you, your wits, and your strategic thinking to save the world for the surviving members of the human race, using new morphing mech units, power ups, and a ton of bad-ass vehicles.

When you tire of the single player campaign, you can switch to one-on-on multiplayer battles and choose the heroic offense or the evil alien defense (or is it the other way around?), blasting your buddies or defending against them. Whichever side you choose, you’ll have a ton of fun with this gorgeous game.

Source: Anomaly 2