Microsoft's Kinect peripheral was the fastest-selling gadget of all time, and has propelled the Redmond company's Xbox 360 console to the summit of the console wars. Sony's PlayStation Move offers similar features, but simply hasn't managed to yield the popularity of Kinect, and for those of you who've yet to get involved in the interaction-fest, you can now grab your very own Kinect sensor for the reduced price of $109.99.
Now that we are nearly into the last quarter of the calendar year, it means that the holiday season is officially coming and we need to be thinking about getting into that gift purchasing overdrive mode that sees us spend our hard earned money on friends, family and loved ones. Alternatively, we could just see it as an excuse to go out and buy ourselves all the great things that we want and blame it on holiday madness. I know which one I'd prefer.
Although the iOS App Store is overflowing with apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, the Mac equivalent doesn't have nearly as many apps living within it, meaning OS X users have significantly less choice when it comes to extending the functionality of their machines. With that said, I tend to find that my personal taste of OS X apps come in two forms, either extremely simple creations or apps that actually go all out and provide fantastic functionality that makes my life a lot easier. An example of the former is Live Wallpaper that offers dynamic backgrounds and an example of the latter is Xcode or Pixelmator that offer grunt and power.
After quite a bit of speculation over the last couple of weeks, Japanese-based camera giants Nikon Corporation haven finally officially lifted the lid on their new range of Coolpix-S compact digital cameras, one of which stays true to the rumor mill and features a fully functional version of the Android mobile operating system. Nikon is billing the release as proposing new possibilities for digital cameras and with the inclusion of Android and additional features, we would be inclined to agree.
Although it originally started its life as a modification to Microsoft's Internet Explorer called MyIE, the Maxthon browser which millions of people around the world know and love has developed beyond any kind of recognition since it officially moved away from the MyIE name in 2003. When talking about web browsers, the majority of people may conjure up thoughts of IE, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, but although Maxthon may not be on the top of those lists, it has enjoyed significant success with over 600 million downloads over its lifetime.
I will be open and confess my love for not only Instagram but anything that makes an attempt to use the Instagram API and make a rather awesome product on the back of it. I got on board with Instagram from the beginning and have been sharing photographs with my followers ever since directly from iOS on my iPhone and Android from the Nexus 7. Such is my love for Instagram that I also tend to sign-up for anything related to it, such as Webagram and Instacanvas, so when the Instacube Kickstarter project presented itself, I had to become a part of it.
If you happen to be the owner of a touch-screen tablet like the iPad or something similar, and also a big fan of Microsoft's Office suite of programs, then you probably live under an umbrella of disappointment and are aware of the fact that the Redmond software giants don't offer any native Office apps for the iPad. There's been talk of the iPad App Store receiving some official apps from Microsoft, but up until now nothing has come to fruition, leaving some users extremely disappointed and having to look for alternative solutions to satisfy their need to create and edit documents on the go.
Although we are yet to hear of any official confirmation from Apple about the rumored September 12th press event, everything which we are hearing from various sources seems to suggest that we might be in for a little more than we had initially bargained for when the day eventually comes around. Previous speculation had suggested that the media event is definitely going to be taking place on the aforementioned date, but would more than likely be to introduce the world to the next-generation iPhone and possibly announce the immediate availability of iOS 6 for supported older-generation devices.
Although we didn't expect an official announcement quite this soon, we have been aware for quite some time that Google was planning on bringing a collection of gift cards to certain retail outlets which would allow users to purchase virtual currency that can then be exchanged for goods and services from the Play Store. It hasn't really been a great secret that they were coming and we've already seen them out in the public eye as well as evidence of the cards in the Google Play Store app.
If there is one thing which iPhone fans out there don't really need is additional confirmation that the new iPhone will be introduced to us next month. Unless it comes from the horse’s mouth of course. Over the last few months, we have been treated to countless leaks of components and parts that form the sixth-generation device and also heard enough speculation about the September 12th announcement date to pretty much convince us all that it's going to happen on that day. All we really need is the official invites from Apple.
