Jordan Golson

Angry Birds Space has received a new update adding a new episode with content tied to NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. NASA and Rovio have partnered extensively on marketing for Angry Birds Space, using the game to promote NASA's educational and scientific discoveries. The new update sees the piggies hijacking the Curiosity Mars Rover and serving 20 new levels on Mars for the angry birds. NASA...

Facebook has released a completely rewritten iOS app that is significantly faster than the prior version. With more and more Facebook users accessing the social network via mobile, the company views having a fast mobile app as increasingly essential. News that the update was forthcoming was first reported back in June. With the updated version, Facebook's engineers have dumped the HTML5-based...

Chair Entertainment, the division of Epic Games responsible for the first two games in the Infinity Blade series, has released a new game called Vote!!!. The game pits U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney against each other with the same gesture-based fighting mechanics from Infinity Blade.Though the game only launched today, it has already drawn a lot of media attention in...

Apple has removed the controversial 'Genius' TV spots from its YouTube channel and from the Apple.com marketing page for the Mac. The ads were poorly received with some critics asking if it was a good idea to make potential customers seem clueless. Others thought they were excellent ads that showed non-technical Mac buyers the support options available to them.Apple stopped airing the ads on...

The latest version of Counter-Strike -- Valve's flagship series and one of the most popular PC gaming titles ever -- has arrived on the Mac via Steam. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the fourth title in the CS series, which has sold more than 27 million units in its lifetime.Along with Portal 2, this is the second time that Valve has launched a flagship game simultaneously on the Mac and...

EA/PopCap announced today that it would be releasing a sequel to Plants vs. Zombies in the Spring of 2013. The company hasn't released any information about pricing, systems, or availability -- but did issue a press release with "comments" from characters from the Plants vs. Zombies universe:“Spring is crullest curlie ungood time, and plantz grow dull roots,” noted an unidentified...

Digital advocacy organization Public Knowledge has accused AT&T of violating FCC rules on net neutrality with its new policy regarding the use of FaceTime over Cellular. AT&T announced late last week that it will only allow users on its new Mobile Share data plans to use the new FaceTime over Cellular service in iOS 6.A senior staff lawyer for Public Knowledge told the New York Times that it...

Austin Yang, an industrial designer current living in Edinburgh, Scotland, has created a working iPad typewriter keyboard that uses a hammer with a capacitive touch bumper to touch the iPad's on-screen keyboard.Oddly, the physical keyboard doesn't map properly to the QWERTY keyboard on the iPad, most likely because of the mechanics of the typewriter that Yang has created. This is the likely...

AT&T will not charge customers for using the FaceTime over Cellular feature in iOS 6, but will require users to be on one of its new Mobile Share data plans. Last month, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declined to talk about how the company would handle the new FaceTime feature, saying "it's too early to talk about pricing."AT&T's new Mobile Share data plans will launch August 23rd, allowing users...

According to Polygon and veteran video game developer Brian Fargo, video game streaming company OnLive has fired its entire staff and the company will cease to exist as of later today: According to e-mails forwarded to Polygon from supposedly former OnLive employees, the company will no longer exist as of today. "I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity...

Apple has seeded a new beta of OS X 10.8.1 to developers, exactly a week after the first build came out, according to 9to5Mac. The release has a build number of 12B17 and Apple reports no known issues, but asks developers to focus on a wide variety of areas for their testing. The delta update -- where only items that have changed are downloaded -- weighs in at 43.27MB. According to 9to5Mac...

Following up on its story from yesterday about a possible forthcoming Apple set-top television box, the The Wall Street Journal had more details to share today.Apple aims to make it so viewers can watch any show at any time via a cloud-based DVR that would store TV shows online. The service would be designed so viewers could begin streaming a show minutes after it began airing live.Another...

Apple's stock price closed at an all-time high of $636.34 today, passing the prior all-time closing high of $636.23 set four months ago on April 9th. The next day, April 10th, the stock hit an intraday high of $644 and the company's market capitalization breached $600 billion before falling back. Apple's stock price is up nearly 60% on the year, outperforming the NASDAQ by more than 3:1 and the...

Instagram has updated its app to version 3.0, adding significant support for location -- both for browsing your own photos, and finding those taken by others.Among other things, the focus on location will allow users to find other pictures taken around them -- at a concert or sporting event, for example -- but will also allow them to navigate through old photos as well. Instagram founder...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has a set-top box in the works that would allow viewing of live cable television as well as other content.Apple Inc. is in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live television and other content, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks represent Apple's ...

Apple has released a new beta build of OS X Lion 10.7.5 to developers. The new beta has a build number of 11G36. Apple reports that it has no issues, but asks developers to examine graphics performance and quality, as well as image and media importing, editing or viewing. A previous build of 10.7.5 was released on July...

The Dark Sky weather app was originally funded via a Kickstarter campaign. It is designed to provide precipitation predictions for the very short term and aims to tell you if it will rain at your location in the next hour. This information can be useful for commuters and joggers, and this intense focus cuts a bit of a niche in the crowded world of iOS weather apps. Dark Sky's developers raised...

EA plans to release the next version of SimCity -- the classic city-building game -- on the Mac simultaneously with the PC release this February. EA will also be delivering Origin, its digital download service, at the same time. The game will be available for purchase and download via the service.Mac users will be able to connect to the new multiplayer component in SimCity and appears to be...

A couple weeks after dropping the price of the iPhone 4S to $149, Sprint has further slashed the price to $49 after a mail-in rebate for a $100 American Express gift card. Apple will price-match Sprint's offer, giving buyers in retail stores a $100 Apple Store gift card. All these purchases require agreeing to a new two-year contract.This may be the lowest price for the iPhone 4S yet in the...

Other World Computing has released a 480GB aftermarket SSD upgrade for the Retina MacBook Pro. However, while OWC's upgrades for the MacBook Air are very price-competitive with the storage upgrades available at the Apple Online Store, the 480GB Aura Pro 6G is less clear-cut.In its blog post announcing the release, OWC notes that "when introduced this past June, the MacBook Pro with Retina...