This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Steam is finally coming to the Mac, and bringing the entire library of Valve games with it. The popular application is King of the Games on Windows, but now it has expanded its reign to include Mac OS X, too. Steam is a digital games distributor, a social networking platform for gamers, a multiplayer host for huge frag fests, and one of the most essential pieces of software for computer gamers everywhere. And if you still have no idea what we’re talking about, think of game titles like Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Portal, and Counter Strike–these gems will finally be available for Mac heads everywhere. The availability of Steam for Mac gamers means that we’ll finally be able to kick the butts of our PC brethern, without investing in a pricey gaming console, or a Windows PC. Additionally, game publishers will be able to distribute all of their latest game titles via digital downloads, and we’ll be able to play all the various Valve titles across a multitude of different computers, regardless of operating system. We don’t doubt that the Mac versus PC debate won’t continue on for generations to come, but at least there’s finally some common ground. The Steam client for Mac beta will be available in April. To prepare you for the inevitable long nights of multiplayer game playing and trash talking, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of the most essential things you’ll be able to do with the Steam client. Think of it as, a beginner’s guide to a whole new world. Create a personal gaming profile The avatar you choose is the first important step to becoming an integral part of the Steam community. Choose wisely, and your future as an elite computer gamer will flourish. However, if you choose poorly, you may be susceptible to a variety of cruel gamer jokes. See what your friends are up to Valve has managed to virtually emulate those treasured times during our childhood, when you’d head outside just to see what the neighborhood kids were up to.

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The Mac Users Guide to Cool Things You Can Do With Steam

Tossing panda bears, drawing in graves to trap stick figure zombies, and lie detectors that avoid detecting lies.  The iPhone App Store is pushing forward a whole new era of apps and games! iGravedigger The visual motif of choice for iPhone game developers is to make everything reminiscent of a hand draw kindergarten project.   Part of this comes from the hands on approach of the touch screen, but, at least in the beginning, it was somewhat appealing.   Often times these have just been the visual theme for a pretty standard game, not lending itself to anything more unique that the scrawling graphics.   iGravedigger definitely escapes that trapping.   The basic premise of iGravedigger is to dig graves deep enough to trap monsters in them.   You are given a plot of land that is drawn against graphing paper that you may remember from sophomore Geometry.   You will have a house on one end and then zombies, elephants, spiders and the like will be running toward the homestead.   It is up to you to draw out graves that are deep enough to trap them

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Mini Reviews: iGravedigger,Lie Detector FREE, Air Bear

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for March 2, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh The Mac Sale is now live with a new bundle. This bundle includes amazing apps such as PathFinder and VideoConverter Pro. As usual, the bundle costs $49.99—a steal for over $500 worth of applications. Yazsoft has announced Playback 1.5 , a major update to their popular zero configuration media server for Mac OS X. Playback allows anyone to share their media with any Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or other supported UPnP compatible device. Playback can also share media stored in folders or even make entire disks available to a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. By default, Playback will share almost any content on the users system. UNIEA has kicked off their UNIEA Omniverse Photo Contest . They’re looking for Omniverse case users to submit photos of their Omniverse in action for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to unieastore.com. Plus, all photo submissions will be used to create a new Omniverse video that they’ll be publishing in the Spring. In order to give folks who want to be in the contest a chance to pick up an Omniverse case (in case they already don’t have one), they’re giving all registrants a 20% off coupon code to use at unieastore.com. Mac users can now benefit from secure connections to remote business networks over the Internet

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – March 2, 2010

Filed under: Gaming , Freeware , Internet , Apple , iPhone , sxsw Happy March! The super hip and trendy South-by-Southwest music and tech festival is coming up this month, and like many tech conventions these days, AT&T is working on a plan to keep their network up and running as thousands of iPhones descend on Austin, Texas to send around voice, texts, and data. GigaOM has a little insight into how they’re planning to do it this year, and if you’re interested in the nuts-and-bolts of keeping a cell phone network up and running (or at least trying to — this is AT&T, after all), it’s worth a read. They’re beefing up the cell towers in the city’s vicinity, setting up a whole new system around the convention center itself, and putting money into the backend as well, to try and increase bandwidth coming into the region. I don’t know if they’ve done anything like this before (I can’t really judge with Macworld — while my iPhone worked fine most of the time, I still only have a 1G, and I was using Sprint MiFi on my Macbook most of the time), but it sounds like a pretty comprehensive setup. Of course, the other reason AT&T is pushing to get ready for SXSW is that the convention has become sort of an unofficial testing ground for the next big social apps. A few years ago, Twitter made its first big push around SXSW, and last year, Foursquare was the app to use (which has since spawned a brand new genre of app, the “check-in” network). So what’s going to be the app pushing data through the AT&T network this year? The buzz so far is around Twitter’s coming ad platform , though it’s hard to think that an ad platform could be a killer app. My money’s on some sort of location-based social game — while Foursquare has gaming elements, I think an app like MyTown could take the concept even farther, and we still haven’t really seen an actual GPS-based RPG or MMO break out. Even those of us who aren’t at SXSW this year will be paying attention to what people are doing on their iPhones there, because odds are good that the app that clicks with attendees there will be what we’re all playing with in a few months. AT&T plans for SXSW 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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AT&T plans for SXSW 2010

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad , iPhone Carriers , Features , Opinions and Editorials We are just past halfway through the 60 day waiting period that Apple announced for the release of the WiFi iPad. While we don’t know everything about the device, we do know there are six different models split in half by a single feature: a GSM 3G cellular radio for data only. In the last 30 days, the first question many people have asked is “Are you going to get an iPad?” But if the answer is yes, the second question is almost always “Are you going to get the 3G?” 3G … The choice to get 3G is tough. First off, the 3G radio will cost you an additional $130. It will also cost you some time if you have already decided to buy an iPad as soon as it is available; the 3G iPad is expected to be available about 30 days after the WiFi only version. This will likely mean you will have to wait until the end of April. It’s not a big deal, but it is something to consider if you aren’t the patient type. But for that $130 you will get the ability to purchase a micro-SIM card you can use to connect to a 3G or Edge network much like an iPhone does today, but you can only use it for a data connection. One big advantage is that it is currently being offered contract free in the U.S. on AT&T’s network. Apple has also leveraged their relationship with AT&T to get some pretty good rates. They are offering a $14.99/month for up to 250MB of usage and $29.99/month for unlimited usage. Again, this is contract free so you can buy it for a month and then skip several if you want to before you turn it back on. At this point, it is assumed that since you are buying the device contract free, that it will also be an unlocked device.

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The iPad: To 3G or not 3G?

  Whether you’re sending an email in Gmail, finding directions to that fancy restaurant using Google Maps, or pretending to be a part of the latest microblogging craze with Google Buzz, the G-word is everywhere. Well, it turns out that there is also a whole library of Google web applications and services stacked up behind the everyday services you may have come to take for granted. Most of the mega company’s services are either full blown web applications readily available to the public, or secretly tucked away behind a door in the Google Labs. However, even those wearing their Public Beta scrubs are readily available to play with. We’ve gone and picked through fifteen Google services you may not have heard of before, but can definitely benefit from. Try them out, and if you have any suggestions of ones we may have missed, leave a note in the comments. Never miss another important headline News Timeline If you’re tired of missing out on the week’s most important headlines, set Google News Timeline as your browser’s home page and you’ll never be out of the loop again.

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15 Awesome Google Services You Never Knew Existed

Google has already dominated the email field with its mammoth Gmail, and the growing monopoly is only going to get more secure with the release of the social networking tool Google Buzz.   The iPhone is nice in that it allows different communication sectors to use 'push' features to indicate the messages have come in the same way that it does with conventional cell phone communication.   This means that you can set your email and social networking accounts to indicate to you on your iPhone when something of interest hits your inbox.   To do this effectively you have to set up your email account into your iPhone so that it will utilize the iPhone's hardware correctly, otherwise you will have to log in using Safari.   Gmail remains the logical culprit for most people's email needs, and it is front and center on your iPhone.     To connect your Gmail account to your iPhone you start by selecting the Mail button from the lower main task bar, which also includes the button for Phone and Safari.   Once in the Mail section select Gmail, which is right under Mobile Me and above Yahoo Mail.   You will be asked to enter in a specific amount of log in information, including the name attached to the Gmail account, the email address, your password, and the description that is relevant

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gPhone: Setting Up and Using a Gmail Account on Your iPhone

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iDevice Apps , Mac Software , Originals Macintosh and iPhone/iPod/iPad product updates and announcements for February 22, 2010: Macintosh iPod Macintosh Kanex has announced the official pre-order availability of its Macworld 2010 Best of Show Award Winner: Kanex XD . This HDMI to Mini DisplayPort converter is specifically designed to give you multiple functionalities with your Apple iMac 27-inch display. Now you can enjoy your iMac 27-inch as both a desktop computer and an HDTV with the Kanex XD. Using the iMac’s beautifully backlit LED display, you can play your PlayStation3, Xbox 360 Elite, and Blu-Ray DVDs experiencing amazing HD visuals. Audio is also transmitted through the Mini DisplayPort into the iMac 27-inch for audio playback. Independent software developer Christian Kienle today announced Ebbinghaus 3.2 for Mac OS X. Ebbinghaus is an easy-to-use flash card application with a beautiful iTunes-like user interface. Organize your cards in decks, folders and smart decks. Ebbinghaus 3.2 comes with a lot of new refinements, including the ability to resize the study window

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Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad product news – February 22, 2010

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad , Features , Opinions and Editorials , Originals When I heard Wired , my favorite tech magazine, would be launching an iPad application to access their content by summer, I was ecstatic. Not just because I enjoy the magazine so much, but because of how they play a role in the shift magazines will take now that the iPad is in existence. For instance, take a look at the video below that shows what Sports Illustrated could be doing with their magazine application. Watching this once makes you realize the great amount of potential the iPad has in terms of revolutionizing the way we look at magazines. However, that’s only the beginning. Unlike newpapers, magazines have always had wonderfully designed pages with plenty of color and images to go around. Furthermore, the idea of a magazine is easier to put into digital form because it is much like a book in the way it is held and read. Instead of a large, folded piece of paper, a magazine is about the size of a tablet screen and bound in book form. And, as you all know, we have already been creating digital forms of books for years. On the other hand, digitizing the newspaper would require a shift in the way we hold and access the information they offer. For that reason, looking at the iPad as a way to forever change the way to read magazines versus the way we read newspapers is a better idea, in my opinion. That said, nobody is saying the very same content we access in newspaper form today could be simply altered to fit the magazine paradigm we are all used to. In fact, this might be the best way to go about the shift to digital content on a tablet device.

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Forget newspapers, the iPad will forever change magazines

Filed under: Macworld , Internet , Apple , iPhone , App Store , iPad Frog Design is here on the show floor at Macworld 2010, and we stopped by their booth earlier in the week to check out what they’ve been up to on the iPhone. They’re a storied design firm (they worked on the Apple II series back in the day) that is diving headfirst into the App Store, with two apps out already and one more on the way. We’ve talked about Postcard Express on the site before, but they ran us through the latest version of the app, which has fixed a lot of the problems that users originally had — the picture size has been tweaked a bit, and the geotagging has been updated and smoothed out to work much better. The most intriguing part of the iPhone app is of course the design — everything, including emailing out the actual postcard, works completely within the app and is as intuitive as possible. While the actual act of sending a virtual postcard might not appeal to everyone (the charm of postcards is that they actually come through the mail), the app itself makes the process easy and fun. We also saw two more apps from Frog Design: tvChatter , which is a TV-centered Twitter app, and the upcoming Temptd, a “health-based social networking app.” Read on for more about both. Continue reading Macworld 2010: Frog Design shows off their iPhone apps Macworld 2010: Frog Design shows off their iPhone apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Macworld 2010: Frog Design shows off their iPhone apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Macworld 2010: Frog Design shows off their iPhone apps