Macgasm

And so it begins… Within  weeks of the CRTC announcing that the carriers and telcos have a right to charge customers based on their usage instead of a flat connection rate, Rogers Inc is now contemplating a super-awesome idea: charging their customers for “data priority.”

According to iPhoneInCanada, Rogers has approached consumers and asked their thoughts on having a “premium service that would ensure connectivity in the light of high network usage.”

Awesome.

So, here’s the obvious question: what constitutes “high network usage?” At the rate that the 3G network and fibre bandwidth is evolving in Canada, we’ll reach “high network usage” in no time. Sure, I’m being a little sarcastic, but this could be a real problem. Being stuck downtown without cellular service on Canada Day is one thing, but being stuck downtown on Canada Day with a stab wound, unable to call an ambulance because you didn’t pay the premium is another. What a gem of an idea.

Let’s future forecast a little here. If this is successful on the mobile network, how long will it take until it’s applied to 3G data, or worse, tethered internet connections?

As need for mobile technologies increases, lower social-economic classes will be treated like second class citizens. This is a real problem. Imagine one child being able to complete his homework because his parents are able to pay for the “extra” service on their plans, while another can’t get a connection because his parents are working minimum wage jobs.  Stay classy Rogers.

This is downright disgusting, and Rogers should be ashamed they even thought it up. The telecommunications system in Canada is joke, and what’s worse is that the CRTC is an even bigger joke.

Go Team Canada.

Sometimes I feel like moving out to the woods and leaving all this bullshit behind.

Article Via iPhone In Canada

Surely in an attempt to not be outdone by Murdoch, Richard Branson has decided to release an iPad-only magazine next week. Being the first to the punch might pay huge dividends for the Virgin mogul, but it might not live up to the News Corps Daily application.

Branson, unlike Murdoch, seems to have gone at it alone, sans Apple Inc. engineers. Branson’s PR team has been pretty tight-lipped about the release. There is a press event scheduled to take place in New York City where they will release the application.  The application is rumoured to focus on culture-type things, including business, travel, the arts, and entertainment.

So, what’s it going to take to make the iPad-only magazine a success? Well, price point is going to be huge, as well as a regular update (hopefully daily). If there’s one thing lacking on the iPad right now, it’s up to the minute news from traditional print sources for an affordable and renewable price.

If Rupert Murdoch is about to make that happen on the iPad, we sincerely hope Branson has something similar. The more A-List publications start to come to the iPad, the more the iPad will become iPod 2.0.

Article Via 9 to 5 Mac

Poker? That’s some card game like Magic the Gathering, right? Okay, I admit that I don’t really know very much about poker. I have absorbed the basics of the game through osmosis, but the intricacies of the specific variants are lost on me. You won’t see any information on the blind buttons or the flop statistics in this post, but you will get a good idea of how Poker Night at the Inventory is put together as a video game. Onward!

Telltale Games, a developer known for making high quality episodic adventure games out of beloved franchises, has put together four completely nutty characters from four completely nutty franchises into one game. Just seeing the roster of Max, Tycho, Strong Bad, and The Heavy was enough to get me to drop $5 on a poker game.

When you start a new tournament, you’re brought into The Inventory — a prohibition-era speakeasy for libations and gambling. If you’ve played with Telltale’s previous games, you’ll notice quite a few familiar faces hanging around in the building. Eventually you’ll end up at a table with the aforementioned cast of characters sitting in a circle. Everybody starts out with $10,000, as you all try to knock each other out of the game. Most interestingly, each of the characters are short the 10k from time to time, so they put up their prized possessions as their buy-in. If you’re successfully able to knock them out of the game, you get what they brought. If you’re also an owner of Valve’s Team Fortress 2, those items will now be available for you to use in-game. Cool, huh?

The biggest draw of the game is, hands-down, the dialogue. If you’ve ever wanted to hear a psychotic rabbity-thing spar verbally with a boxing glove-clad professional e-mail checker, now’s your chance. Faithful to each of the franchises from which they borrow, Telltale seamlessly created a world where misanthropes of all flavors can come together and gamble like the degenerates that they are. It is a huge success from that point of view. If you happen to like poker as well, you’ll be happier than a pig in shit. Poker + Insanity = Poker Night at the Inventory.

In sum, “Poker Night” is a very fun game for a bargain-bin price. You can grab it on Steam or at Telltale’s site. Either way, you’ll be pleased with the tomfoolery that ensues. I promise.

From the makers of Angry Birds comes the next big craze to hit the iTunes Store: Cut the Rope. Based on the same puzzle-solving, addictive, simple gameplay, Cut the Rope managed to sell a mere 1,000,000 copies in the first 10 days after launching and dethroned Angry Birds in the App Store Top 10 list. Available for $0.99 for the iPhone/iPod touch and $1.99 for the iPad, that’s between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 in revenue in just over a week (for those keeping score at home).

Cut the Rope puts you in the position of primary caregiver for a friendly, but impatient candy loving green frog. The physics based gameplay starts out by having you cut the candy free from its rope, letting it fall gracefully towards your hungry pet. If you’re up for a challenge, you can have the candy collect up to three stars before it becomes lunch. While the game starts with simple rope cutting, things become more complicated with fans, baloons, spikes, bubbles, pulleys and lightning, all put there to keep your frog from it’s delicious treat.

What’s Macgasmic

Game publisher Chillingo found their formula for success with Angry Birds and is sticking to the script with Cut the Rope. Simple, physics-based gameplay requiring a nice blend of logic and creativity. Put this into a clean and colorful package, with a memorable character, and you’ve got a top selling app. This is where Cut the Rope really delivers. You can’t help but become attached to your new candy loving friend and the cartoony feel keeps things light in what can be an otherwise frustrating puzzle game.

What’s Not

Don’t get me wrong, Cut the Rope is a fantastic game and a fantastic value at $0.99. However, unlike Angry Birds, the accessibility and fun factor isn’t quite up to par. While Angry Birds could keep you entertained for hours with its addictive gameplay and enjoyable destruction, Cut the Rope gets old quickly if you’re not making progress. The game can be challenging and if you’re not keen on puzzle games, expect to become frustrated.

Overall

For me, Cut the Rope was right up my alley. I enjoyed both the presentation value and the challenging gameplay. It may not be for everyone, but for $0.99 it’s tough to go wrong. If you’re into puzzle games, or just want a quick distraction, Cut the Rope is a great choice for your App Store dollars. The game is also available for the iPad for $1.99.

How was your experience with Cut the Rope? Let us know in the comments.

You might want to think long and hard before you unlock that iOS 4.2.1 device. According to The Big Boss, Apple has decided to put a baseband requirement on iOS.

This means that another hurdle has been thrown directly at your feet while you’re trying to unlock your device. According to the site,

Apple has decided to put a baseband requirement on iOS. So at this point, if you are using Saurik’s server or tiny umbrella and trying to restore 4.2.1 on an iPhone 4, you will end up in recovery mode and tiny umbrella will not be able to pull you out of recovery. In this case, you will have to restore 4.1 again or you will have to restore 4.2.1 stock and be tether jailbroken. (Of course, I recommend 4.1 and not bothering with 4.2.1 at all). If you are an unlocker, this is a no brainer. Do not update to 4.2.1 even to test it at this point.

If you’re thinking about getting your unlock on, we’d suggest waiting.

Hopefully we will see a resolution sooner rather than later.

Article Via The Big Boss

We can’t take any credit for this, but we thought the tip was so good that we’ve decided to pass it along. The tip comes courtesy of OS X Daily. They have a great website over there, so you should check them out.

If you’re having a hard time with naming conventions for your folders, you’re in luck. There’s a nifty little hack to help to differentiate them.

This is less of a problem on the iPad (20 apps per folder) than it is on the iPhone (12 apps), but it’s a problem nonetheless. Having to split your applications between multiple folders can be a real pain in the rear.

It’s probably considered a first world problem, or it may just be a problem for app reviewers, but there’s a nifty solution that will help you stay organized, and it takes advantage of Wingdings and Emoji. Instead of having your applications broken down into App1, App2, and App3 folders, you can set apart each folder with an icon.  It’s kind of hard to explain, but the images below clearly tell the story.

Taking advantage of this nifty little hack only involves copying and pasting the characters into your folder titles.  It might take a little while to set up since you have to jump back and forth from your browser, but it’ll be worth it.

If you’re looking for Wingdings characters, you can get them here, and if you want to get your Emoji on, you can get the steps here.

Article and Image Credit: OS X Daily

Starting today Iceland Express will be offering iPads on all of their transatlantic flights as in-flight entertainment.

While they won’t be giving them out for free ($13 USD rental fee applies), the iPads will surely help with boredom on longer flights across the Atlantic ocean. Iceland Express’ Georg Haraldsson notes that that the iPad makes sense for longer flights because it has such a great battery life. It was time for us “to invest in a device that is more geared towards long-haul [flights].”

All trans-atlantic flights will have 25 iPads available per flight, starting today, but they will be increasing availability early next year. WiFi will not be available on the planes at launch, but Iceland Express is looking into the possibilities.

I have to say, it’s a nice little perk. After spending some time on a flight from Toronto to Frankfurt last winter, it’s pretty obvious that this type of program will be a hit on Iceland Express flights.

If anyone finds themselves at 35,000 feet on a trans-atlantic Iceland Express flight in the future, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the program.

Photo Credit: New York Times

A couple of days ago, a video surfaced on the internet that had Woz talking about Apple’s purchase of Nuance. We didn’t run it because we figured we would have heard more about something huge like that. Nuance Communications isn’t exactly a mom and pops store, and they have a pretty large market cap (5.28B).

Apple passing 5.2 billion dollars to Nuance wouldn’t go unnoticed by anyone, and unless Woz had advanced knowledge, and was dropping the details before the contract was signed, it was pretty obvious that this was nothing more than a rumor. We have a lot of respect for Woz, and he’s smart enough to know what he can and cannot talk about, should he have had advanced knowledge of a deal.

He thought the deal was done already, and he was talking about it like it was common knowledge.

That got us thinkging. Was Woz talking about Apple’s acquisition of Siri earlier this year? But, we decided it would be best to keep our opinions to ourselves until we knew for sure what was going on.

While we will never be sure if Woz was referring to Siri when he mentioned Nuance by name, we now know that Apple did not purchase Nuance. The Woz has retracted his statement.

The poor guy has had a tough couple of weeks. First he was misquoted as saying that Android was going to be better than the iPhone, and now he misspoke about a Nuance acquisition.  The announcement that Apple purchased Nuance sent the NUAN stock climbing, and then falling again when Woz debunked himself.

We forgive him though. If it wasn’t for him, most of us wouldn’t be able to sit here and prognosticate about technology.

Article Via Electronista
Photo Credit: TrendHunter