Macgasm

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.

Our Macs are built-in with the capability to run in HiDPI mode. That’s right — Retina-level graphics right on your Mac. Sadly, most screens available aren’t high enough resolution to be useful. Well, except for that shiny new iPad you have! Its 2048×1536 native resolution means that if it was a monitor in HiDPI mode, it would have the effective real estate of a 1024×768 monitor with the clarity of a glossy magazine. That’s where Air Display comes in.

Once you install the free Air Display Connect software on your Mac, you’re going to need to buy Air Display for your iOS device for $9.99 USD. Once you’re running the software on both devices, your iPad will show up on your Mac a display that you can manipulate like any other. Best of all, you can turn on HiDPI mode, and look at how beautiful everything will be when we have better displays hooked up to our Macs. You probably won’t be watching movies over your wireless connection, but it is more than fast enough to get work done if you’re using 802.11n. A wired connection from your Mac to the router would probably make things smoother, however.

If you’ve never experienced the Dragon Age universe before, this is a great way to start. Not only do you get the complete original game, but you get all of the DLC and Awakening — a completely separate adventure for your main character. New quests, characters, locations, and stories are all available in one neat bundle for only $29.99 USD. Depending on how much of a completionist you are, you could easily get hundreds of hours of gameplay to experience all of the different scenarios. If that sounds too daunting, don’t worry — a single play through will give you a cohesive story that will leave you wanting more of the Warden.

Spanning about a seven-year range, Dragon Age II takes you through the rise of a new character: Hawke. Beginning during the events of Dragon Age Origins, you ship out of the land of Ferelden, and head to the city of Kirkwall in the Free Marches. For $15.05 USD, you get the original game as well as access to some of the DLC. The good stuff like the Legacy and Mark of the Assassin quests will be an additional cost, but when the game itself is so cheap, you can’t really complain.

If you want more Dragon Age, you can always check out the spectacular books: The Stolen Throne, The Calling, and Asunder. The best part is that they are written by the lead writer of the games, so the tone is completely consistent.

The Cartella

If you love the look of Moleskines, this 13″ Macbook Air sleeve from Mr. and Mrs. PQ on Etsy is right up your alley. When stacked next to other books, you won’t even be able to tell that there is a laptop in there. It’s truly beautiful, and any Air owner would be proud to carry it around. It costs $89.99 USD, and the shipping ranges from $10 USD in the United States to $35 USD outside of North America.

When Steve Jobs announced the Macbook Air at Macworld 2008, he infamously debuted it by showing off how it fits in a manilla envelope. If envelope-chic strikes your fancy, this is the sleeve for you. Lithuanians Donata and Linas on Etsy sell this classy-looking laptop sleeve that will fit either the 13″ Macbook Pro or Macbook Air. It costs $89.00 USD with $6.00 USD shipping throughout the EU, and $7.00 USD shipping everywhere else.

If ever there were laptop sleeves to envy, these would be the ones. If you like these enough to actually pull the trigger on the shopping cart, make sure to let us know by leaving a comment underneath this post. We love knowing when we can bring a product and a consumer together in holy matrimony capitalist harmony.

Not all games involve jumping, stabbing, and shooting. Hell, some games even bring up the question, “What is a game?” to the minds of its players. That’s something that this glorious indie game called Dear Esther does, and I don’t know what the answer is.Dear Esther isn’t a video game like you’ve seen before. It is entirely focused on a story, and each and every play-through is different. The events, soundtrack, and even the look of the game is randomized, so the Dear Esther you play is different than the Dear Esther your friend played. If you’re intrigued, there has never been a better time to jump on the Dear Esther bandwagon. For only $4.99 USD, you can pick up this piece of artwork for both OS X and Windows on Steam. This takes casual gaming to new heights. This isn’t your dad’s casual game. Tell Pac-Man to take a hike, and give good ol’ Esther a spin.If you want to know more about the fascinating history of Dear Esther, you need to go check out the developer’s website. It’s almost as interesting as the game itself.

Last year, Apple decided that going forward applications in the Mac App Store would need to be sandboxed. Much bellyaching happened from developers, so the due date of sandboxed apps was moved forward a few months. Turns out, that extension is almost up as June 1st draws closer.To comply with the increased security measures, Pixelmator, the beloved consumer image editor, has been updated to version 2.0.4. It now complies with the sandboxing regulation on OS X Lion. Good to see that the Pixelmator team isn’t waiting until the last minute to get their app updated.What does this mean for you, though? It shouldn’t really impact your everyday interactions. The point of sandboxing is to keep applications away from everything else on your computer so that a rogue exploit can’t really do much damage. If implemented properly, you shouldn’t notice much of a difference at all, and you’ll benefit silently from more secure applications. Developers on the other hand mostly complain because it requires a non-trivial amount of work to implement in many situations. Some apps can’t even work properly with sandboxing, but those are a minority that probably wouldn’t be on the App Store anyway.Sandboxing is coming, so get ready for a torrent of App Store updates. Image Source: Andrew Malone

If you’re in need of a Blu-ray writer for your Mac, you’re probably going to need an external device. Not many of us are rocking the Mac Pro at this point. Well, if you’re in the market, you should take a gander at what Asus just announced.

Ray Willington, HotHardware:

Reading and writing data on Blu-ray discs works perfectly well on OS X. That’s not the problem. The issue is that Apple won’t put in the low-level DRM-related shenanigans that the Blu-ray consortium requires for commercial Blu-ray playback. Of course, there are other options.

I currently have a Buffalo Mediastation hooked up to my iMac, and I couldn’t be happier. I just have to get creative about watching commercial Blu-rays.

Source: HotHardware

Apple seems to have an oscillating love for Nvidia, often switching to and from the graphics chipsets with alternating laptop releases. Both ABC News and The Verge are reporting that Apple is planning to switch from AMD and back to NVIDIA for their graphics chipset in the rumoured upcoming MacBook Pro.

The entire Mac lineup has been reported to include Ivy Bridge CPUs in the upcoming computer refresh from Apple, but the inclusion of the GeForce GT 650M card in the MacBook Pro is a pretty new rumor at this point.

From Joanna Stern at ABC News:

The current MacBook Air has an Intel HD Graphics chip, and the MacBook Pro versions that start at 15-inches currently have an AMD Radeon HD 6750M card or Radeon HD 6770M card. We wouldn’t be surprised if Apple gives the graphics processor a bit of an upgrade moving forward. It pretty much happens every time they release a new version of their laptop.