This weeks App of the Week is possibly one of the most addicting games that I’ve run into. It’s a super simple game that can be player with one finger and a little bit of tilting.

Temple Run is a simple game in which you are running from these mutant monkey like creatures and trying to collect as many coins and power-ups as you can without running into any obstacles. There are gaps to jump over, fire to slide under, broken off pieces of temple and much more to avoid while trying to get as far as you can.

The coins that you end up getting can go into upgrades to make the power-ups last longer and be more worth it for you once you get them. This 3D game play app will keep you going for hours as you try to level up and not make the mistakes that you made before.

The experimental update is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and can be found on the Dropbox Forum.  I tested the beta with my iPhone 4s and the SD card from my camera, and both didn’t seem to work at first. For the auto import functions to work, your computer must have AutoPlay enabled.  If you’d prefer to keep your computer safe with AutoPlay turned off, you can right-click on your removable drive and manually open the AutoPlay prompt. After clicking import photos and videos, Dropbox automatically created a folder called Camera Uploads and began uploading all the photos and videos from my SD card. The first photo or video you upload earns you an extra 500MB, and as mentioned before, for every 500MB uploaded you will  earn an extra 500MB.

If you choose to test this new feature, keep in mind this is an experimental build which means just about anything can go wrong. The Dropbox team recommends you make a backup of any important files before proceeding with the installation. If you do encounter any issues with the beta, be sure to let the Dropbox team knows on the forum so  issues can be resolved before the final update is released.

Download at the Dropbox Forum.

The internet has changed the way we interact, how we do business, and spend money. Chances are that we wouldn’t be here today without the way the internet works now. It’s sad though that people are vulnerable because of vague patents that get granted and mess with intellectual property.

Social media and technology is a wide open door for patent trolls who register all the vague patents they can get then go after big companies with their vague patents, just to get a settlement deal and make some cash from hard-working companies.

I received this infographic in an email from FrugalDad and thought it’d be interesting to share with our audience, so enjoy the infographic below and let us know what you think.

Click the image below for a larger version

At MacWord Apple announced the release of Final Cut Pro 10.0.3 which brings multicam features and more. After working out the kinks and getting user feedback Apple is moving towards the professional market and bringing back all the features that we loved in Final Cut Pro 7. You can also get the FCP7 to FCPX conversion tool for $10 in the Mac App Store.

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 brings multicam integration with up to 64 camera support. It supports different cameras with multiple types of codecs and sizes to match what you need. With that it also has advanced metadata integration with better audio sync for your videos.

Next, FCPX is bringing back layered PSD file support, previously you had to use Motion to import it into FCPX. Now it’s super simple to import direct PSD files.

More features include meta-relink, advanced chroma keying, improved text and effect editing, advanced key framing all of that and much more.

Hardware support is also being added under the tag of BETA and includes support for Blackmagic Design, AJA Video Systems PCIe Card, Thundebolt hardware and support for Matrox is coming soon.

Look at how social networks have grown over the years. Facebook has a total of 800 million uses with Twitter following with 200 million and Google+ at the end of the pack with a little over 40 million users. To put that in perspective, there are 100 times as many people as there are people living in New York City. All of this sharing and networks equates to 24% of a single persons online time. To compare people only spend an average of 9.8% on their time online dedicated to gaming. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest behind China and India.

The following infographic by Voltier Digital explains it all:

Social media has a vast and growing influence on how we share out lives and stay in touch with friends. It has changed the flow of information from a one-way service to a two-way conversation, and it has improved out ability to engage brands, politicians, and news organizations. Social media sites continue to grow, and as they extend their reach into mainstream outlets, they will become an increasingly important aspect of our lives by becoming increasingly good at facilitating the sharing of information.

Click the image below for a larger version

Jon Rubinstein originally started with the NeXT project in hardware, who later transferred to Apple as Apple acquired NeXT systems. He played a major role in developing the iMac and the PowerMac computer line and played one of the important role in the iPod project that drove the company to dominating the music service. In 2006, he retired from Apple and joined Palm to help revitalize the company, including the development of the Palm Pre and its WebOS.  In 2009, he replaced Ed Colligan and became CEO of Palm, in which he stood at that position for a year before Hewlett-Packard acquired the company for 1.2 billion USD . During his time as CEO of Palm, he oversaw a dramatic restructure of the company, including rebuilding the phones and their mobile OS. When HP acquired Palm, Rubinstein helped transitioned the company over to HP. When HP announced the end of the company developing WebOS, Rubinstein was assigned to “product innovation role” for the remainder of his time here, mostly to preface his departure. Ultimately, after 2 years working for HP, Jon Rubinstein has left HP.

According to AllThingsD, Rubinstein has said that he has no immediate plans on what he is going to do after leaving HP, saying  “I am going to take a well deserved break after four and a half years of developing webOS.” Mylene Mangalind, a HP spokesperson, has said in a statement…

 “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well.”

As of right now, the WebOS software is opened to the community to develop and innovate. Also, we wish Jon Rubinstein the best on what he is going to do later on.

This weeks iPhone app of the week is Flight Control, which is also available for the IPad. It’s simply a free flowing strategy game that you have to guide planes to land in certain areas without them crashing.

Flight Control is one of those most have apps for keeping yourself busy on long plane rides or road trips. With six unique maps you’ll be kept busy for hours on end until your battery dies.

Flight Control is incredibly easy to learn! Just touch and drag the aircraft to their landing zones and avoid collisions. It’s also completely addictive to keep you coming back for more and more.

In the game you can fly solo, or share landing duties with a friend by playing online via Game Center or over local Wi-Fi network or even Bluetooth.

The best part about this game is the unique achievements and leaderboards that motivates you to get to that next level and compete with others around the world.

Flight Control has three flavors for your use, a free version with only one map; a $0.99 full version that has multiple maps and expandability and lastly an iPad version for your pleasure.

The information was revealed today when a posting was put up on the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC), looking for market research for a “Social Media Application.”

This proposal for a tool to be able to monitor social networks for potential threats sounds a little like Big Brother to me. A government organization will soon be watching our every post and status update for anything that sounds suspicious. Even something harmless could get you red flagged and cause a whole mess of problems.

The FBI has conducted market research and determined that a geospatial alert and analysis mapping application is the best known solution for attaining and disseminating real time open source intelligence and improving the FBI’s overall situational awareness.

Here’s a couple of the main features the FBI is going after:

• Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
• Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the defined search parameters.
• Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
• Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking
  sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

The full FBI doucment:

[via New Scientist]

I recently received the Fonera 2.0n for review by the wonderful people at Fon. This router is beyond anything than just your normal router, it includes integrated apps and advanced settings like FTP servers and torrent servers (legal torrents of course).

The apps include everything from YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and other uploading sources so that when you insert a USB drive into the included USB port those applications can grab your photos and quickly upload them without being at a computer. If you choose not to do it that way there’s also just using it as a storage device attached to the router.

As explained in the video the router is highly customizable with one of the cleanest interfaces that I’ve ever seen. It’s very easy to navigate and configure, when you first start it up, it gives you a simple wizard to get the main settings configured before letting you mess around with it even further.

One of the best things that I’ve found about this router is the ability to plug in a USB 3G dongle and create a 3G wifi hotspot with the router. The Fonera 2.0n router will defiantly be replacing my old Linksys G router.

If you’d like to get your hands on this router visit Fon.

For most young to teenage women she is the best mother on the earth, for everyone else it seems he’s the devil. The world is filled with both sides of the spectrum for this young pop star.

Rap star Usher signed Bieber to a record label in 2008 and the young pop star just took off. He joined Twitter and quickly gained millions of Twitter followers, he jumped on Facebook and even more people like his Facebook page over there too. At the look of things, he’s just warming up. Justin’s life is still young and he just keeps getting more and more intertwined with music.

Social media agency Crisp Social, has created an infographic taking a look back at the start to present day of Justin Bieber.

Click the image below to see a larger version