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Bungie’s “Pathways into Darkness” Re-Released For Free On The Mac App Store→

In August of 1993, Bungie Software released Pathways into Darkness the most advanced and ground breaking First Person Shooter for the Macintosh.The game broke new ground combining Adventure gameplay with the new First Person Shooter game that was just emerging onto the scene. As time passed, the Macintosh hardware and software changed and the game Pathways into Darkness was no longer playable on a modern computer… Until Now.

Pathways into Darkness was a critical success, and it’s widely regarded as Bungie’s first commercial success as well. As Bungie’s Jason Jones said in an interview in 1995, it was “the game that launched the company”. The same company that would show, four years later, gameplay footage of Halo at Macworld.

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GIF Finder for iOS→

Reports of the GIF’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Not a day goes by that I don’t see a reaction GIF pop up in a Twitter conversation or text from a friend. Here at MacStories, we “rely” on GIFs as our daily source of visual entertainment and subtle feedback in our iMessage group thread.

GIF Finder is a recent addition to my arsenal of GIF discovery tools that is simple but well executed. The app is free and it can search for GIFs on Tumblr; you can search for GIFs matching queries like “excited” or “sports fail” and tap on a thumbnail to view a GIF in full-screen. Tap the share button, and the app brings up a menu with options to Copy URL (which doesn’t work for me), share on iMessage and Twitter, but also open in Google Chrome and Tweetbot. The app is universal for iPhone and iPad.

I wish GIF Finder could search beyond Tumblr: ReplyGIF, Reactions GIFs, and imgur’s reactiongifsarchive albums are essential resources that I’d love to see supported in GIF Finder.

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TodoMovies 2: A Gorgeous Way to Keep Track of Movies You Want to Watch

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Due in part to the frequency I can meet up with friends and get to a movie theater, I inevitably end up with a backlog of movies to watch since I often don’t see them until months after they’ve been released. It wasn’t until last weekend that I finally watched The Hobbit for example, both in part to try Vdio and get hands on with Taphive’s latest app.

Where Apple’s Trailers showcases upcoming films and offers up information on where and when to watch them, TodoMovies 2 is your personal list of movies seen and not yet seen, keeping movies sorted in any preferred order while also offering trailers and additional links to associated goodies like soundtracks. Integrated with TMDb and additionally bringing in ratings from sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Netflix, TodoMovies 2 offers a quick glance at actors and actress, plot summaries, and ratings underneath gorgeous movie posters that shine on Apple’s Retina displays.

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Status Board Links→

In my review of Panic’s Status Board, I mentioned that I was looking forward to seeing what the user community would come up with. That didn’t take long.

Hilton Lipschitz came up with a way to integrate Google Analytics with Status Board. He also has a version for Top Pages.

Thomas Bensmann created a script to fetch server statistics and display them in a table widget in Status Board.

Dave Verwer of Shiny Development has already updated the popular Average App Store Review Times site to include two feeds for Status Board, though he says a better version is in the works.

Adriano Manocchia posted a PHP script to parse data from AppFigures API 1.1 into JSON files ready for Status Board.

Bob VanderClay built a Nest panel for Status Board, and posted the code on GitHub.

And last, a Mint pepper for Status Board by Maxime Valette. My friend Preshit has the details:

Today, Maxime Valette, the creator of URI.LV has now released a Pepper for Mint that lets you add graphs for hourly, daily, weekly and monthly stats from your Mint installation to Status Board. He was kind enough to let me test it on my site and was quick to squash a few bugs. The installation of the pepper is simple and it even readily gives you clickable panicboard:// links that’ll automatically install the graph in your Status Board app.

I’m glad to see people are already creating cool hacks and widgets for Status Board, and I can’t wait to see more official Sources.

(Note: the URL of this linked post goes to my public statusboard tag on Pinboard, where you can find all the websites also linked above)

Update: Chris Patterson has put together a webpage collecting all Status Board-related links for hacks and scripts. Go bookmark it right now.

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Readdle Documents Gets iPhone Support→

Nice update to Readdle’s recently rebranded file manager for iOS. The iPhone version has the same features of the iPad app, so make sure to read my original review if you missed it.

Now that it’s universal, Documents comes with proper iCloud sync for documents. iCloud sync requires you to move files to a specific iCloud folder inside the app, and it worked well in my tests. There are two details that I like about Documents for iPhone: the dual icons for the browser/document panel, and the way the tab bar becomes an action bar after you hit Edit. I know Apple probably advises against this kind of UI, but it looks good.

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PowerUp: 8-bit iPhone Camera For The Nostalgic Gamer

In February 1998, Nintendo released an accessory for the Game Boy line called Game Boy Camera. Compatible with all Game Boy systems (including the Color that would only come out eight months later), the Game Boy Camera could take black & white digital photos using the limited four-color palette of the Game Boy hardware. The Game Boy Camera, which was also compatible with the Super Game Boy SNES/Super Famicom accessory, could print photos on thermal paper through the Game Boy Printer, another piece of hardware that Nintendo introduced in 1998 and discontinued in 2003 (two years after the release of the first Game Boy Advance).

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Siri Cheat Sheet→

Brett Terpstra:

I also added a cheat sheet for Siri. I know it’s not the most useful thing in the world; how often are you sitting at your laptop or desktop when you want to use Siri? Still, I’d spent some time exploring and needed a way to practice the various command syntaxes so that I’d be able to use them without thinking so much after I hit the button.

While I always check out every project by Brett, I somehow missed this one. The Siri cheat sheet is part of a bigger collection called Cheaters:

Cheaters is a collection of HTML-based cheat sheets meant for display in an Automator-based popup browser which can float on your screen while you work in other apps.

I have already found some commands I didn’t know Siri supported. I am now wondering if any Italian ever made an Italian Siri cheat sheet as thorough as this one. (note: this is sad, but unsurprising)

I look forward to playing more with Cheaters. The way Brett calls the HTML file with Automator is particularly clever and extensible. Make sure to check out the other cheat sheets, which include MultiMarkdown and Sublime Text 2.

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Status Board’s Samba de Setup→

Cabel Sasser:

One of the things we wanted to make truly excellent in our brand-new Status Board iPad app was the setup process. Setup assistants are never fun, always annoying, and kill that “new app” buzz faster than anything. The only thing worse is that giant overlay some apps do that draw arrows all over your screen pointing to all the buttons and things like some demented football coach.

In my review, I likened the illustrations and tone of the QuickGuide Manual to Portal’s GLaDOS, but I forgot to mention the music. Now you can listen to it on Cabel’s blog. I want to make this my new iPhone ringtone.

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