Macgasm

DeathSpank

Ron Gilbert of Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and Backyard Sports fame teamed up with Hothead Games to make a brand new humor-infused action-RPG. For the most part, this game is successful at melding Gilbert’s humor with the genre, but there is a lot of grinding that needs to be done. For a limited amount of time, you can grab the game for only $2.99 on the app store.

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue

Originally designed as the second half of a larger game, Thongs of Virtue is part of Ron Gilbert’s original work, and follows directly after the original DeathSpank. This installment adds modern weaponry, and continues the tale of our goofy eponymous character. If you think you’ll like DeathSpank, you should pick up both this and the original. Just as above, it is available for $2.99 for a limited time on the app store.

The Baconing

Much like the third installment of the Godfather series, many people feel that it lacks the special sauce that made the first two special. It could easily be argued that the sauce in question is Ron Gilbert. The Baconing was made without his involvement, so don’t expect the story to be as interesting or funny. Plus, you get to do EVEN MORE GRINDING! This is $2.99 in the app store as well, but YMMV.

Remember Circle, that nice looking app that lets you know when your friends are near by while you’re out on the town? While it’s taken some heat for its lack of utility over the last couple of months, there’s no denying that the application looks great.

The company has released a nifty little sneak peak of what it took to get the app designed and looking like it does today. If you’re interested in what it takes to develop a quality looking application, you’re gonna want to check the video out, as well as the design page over at discovercircle.com. It’s worth a look.

Facebook has finally rolled out their very own camera application for the iPhone. The app, a direct competitor to Instagram (which Facebook now also owns) takes photos on your phone, posts the unaltered, hipster free versions into your camera roll locally, and then uploads the image to your Facebook account.

Camera, ships with 15 hipster filters for aspiring iPhoneographers, lets you tag your friends in photos directly from the phone, as well as quickly crop and rotate your pictures before shipping the images off to the Facebook servers.

I hate to say it, but this is the kind of thing Apple needed to do with the native iPhone camera application. Photostream is great and all, but manually emailing and iMessaging images to friends and family is getting old really quickly.

The install process for getting Facebook’s Camera application is a little bit strange. Currently you have to head to their site, click the install button, and have the company text message you a download link. It may only be temporary until the app propagates around the various App Stores, but I can’t help but wonder if its an attempt at harvesting phone numbers.

It’s also kind of strange that the app is named Camera, exactly like the iPhone’s native camera application.  How that got by Apple’s review team is beyond us…

Airfoil Speakers is an app from Rogue Amoeba that lets you turn your device into an AirPlay receiver. The iOS version has been in the app store since 2009, but unfortunately that has changed as of today.

Paul Kafasis, Rogue Amoeba:

This highlights one of the biggest issues for developers on the app store. Even if you follow all of Apple’s written guidelines, they still have ultimate say on your fate. Sadly, they have shown that they aren’t worried about removing apps for seemingly arbitrary reasons or no reason at all. Apple controls the vertical and the horizontal, and sometimes that means developers (and users) get the short end of the stick. Let’s hope that Apple reverses their decision here so we can get back to rocking out using AirPlay.

The iPhone 4 and, to a greater extent, the iPhone 4S are excellent point and shoot cameras. For most cases, they are exactly what you want in a camera. Your phone is always with you, it is easy to go from 0 to record, and the clarity is acceptable in pretty much all situations. But what about some edge cases? Should you really buy a whole other camera when you’re mostly content with your iPhone? Well, consider the Olloclip.

Originally a Kickstarter project, the Olloclip is now available at good ol’ Thinkgeek for only $69.99 USD. This quick-connect lens system that attaches to your phone comes with three different lenses for your photographic fringe cases. Wide-angle, fisheye, and macro lenses can easily be attached to your iPhone in a snap, and you’re good to go. When you just can’t get that small knick-knack in focus, switch to the macro lens, and the problem is solved. When you need to take a group shot, switch to the wide-angle lens, and your iPhone becomes the best consumer camera you’ve ever owned.

If you like the Olloclip, or any other product we cover, please take a moment to hit us up on Twitter. When you take the time to give us feedback, our coverage will get even better, so don’t hesitate. We love to hear from readers.

Today Bump has announced that it will begin letting its customers Bump photos directly from a mobile handset (iPhone, Android) to a computer. You can now head to their website http://bu.mp, select the photos you want to send in the Bump application on your iPhone, and then tap the spacebar with your phone, or finger.

From The Bump Blog:

It’s pretty snazzy, and it looks like it’s going to be a great way to share your photos with friends and family without having to send an iMessage or email. It’s pretty damn cool. Just make sure you don’t deny the bu.mp website access to your currently location in Safari. The app won’t work without access to your location. Learnt that one the hard way.

The writing is on the wall, we’ve said it before, buying, and renting, games from a store is quickly becoming the next casualty of the Internet. Blockbuster died, and it’s likely only a matter of time until GameFly dies too as companies stop publishing physical discs and move towards digital only downloads. GameFly has a plan though, “its plans to begin publishing mobile games for the iOS and Android platforms, as well as launching the independent GameFly GameStore for Android later this fall.”

From the sounds of it, and there’s very little detail to go on here, it sounds like GameFly wants to be Steam for Android. Which is nice, but it’s the publishing for iOS thing that has piqued our interests the most. Is GameFly planning on becoming the next Chillingo? It certainly sounds like that’s the plan according to GameFly’s SCP of Business Development and Content Sean Spector. While the company is planning on becoming a publisher for iOS, the announcement seems to focus most heavily on Android. “We plan to be a leading player in mobile games by launching our retail GameStore for Android and helping to fund mobile developers of all sizes to publish, promote and sell their smartphone and tablet games.”

We plan on being a lot of things, but the real question is whether or not GameFly can make it actually happen. Their business may certainly hinge on the success of this move. It may not be this year, or next, but GameFly is going to have a very difficult time renting video games if game publishers stop shipping game discs with their titles and rely on digital downloads exclusively.

The Malkovich gets his very own Siri advertisements. They’re pretty hilarious in a Malkovich kind of way. And no, the title isn’t a typo.

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