Want to generate some 8-bit Nintendo style sounds? Maybe you need sound effects for an iPhone game you’re working on, a song you’re making, or you just want to have some good old 8-bit nostalgia.

Cfxr, which is short for… well I have no idea, is a fun app that makes and endless amount of 8 bit sounds instantly. You can completely adjust sounds, or just click the ‘random’ button and it will make and play a randomly generated sound effect for you.

As you can see in the screenshot below, there are a few pre-determined styles of sounds that fit your classic 8-bit gaming needs: Pickup/coin, Laser/shoot, Explosion, Powerup, hit/hurt, Jump, Blip/select, and Random. You can then use the sliders to adjust all aspects of the sound effects and then export the files in either 16 or 8 bit audio as a wav file so you can use them later.

You can grab the Mac version of Cfxr here, it’s a free download.

If you want to generate some Nintendo style sound effects in Windows, or you don’t want to grab the Mac download, there’s a Flash version available here that has basically the same interface and functionality, and also allows you to export your sound effects as .wav files.

What better use for an old dead Mac server than turning it into a Mac Kegerator? It looks like this is on a tradeshow floor, maybe this awesome beer server made an appearance at MacWorld expo? Thanks to Ezra for sending this in.

Excited for the Mac version of Civ 5? Me too. Now we have a video trailer showing it off! The video trailer also provides a Civilization 5 for Mac release date range of “Fall 2010” which is another way of saying “any day now.”

Here’s the text from the video trailer:

Sid Meier’s Civilization V Mac reinvigorates the classic turn-based strategy genre with an astonishing new engine built from the ground-up for this flagship edition of the Civilization franchise. Players are introduced to an entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of entertainment as players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known.

Features:
Civilization V Mac introduces hexagon tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire.

The brand new engine orchestrates a spectacular visual experience featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time.

Successful diplomacy will depend on players carefully managing relationships with other leaders, trading items and land, plying them with gold, and deciding if they are friend or foe.

Expanded visuals and immersive audio invite would-be kings to take up the reigns of power and forge a mighty empire. Civilization V offers a limitless variety of vast, realistic and diverse landscapes for players.

An intuitive interface eases both new players and Civ veterans into the game. Guided by a set of trusted advisors who will explain game functionality and provide counsel for significant decisions.

Wars between empires feel massive as armies dominate the landscape, and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before.

The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging players to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield.

Write your own epic story each time you play. Choose one of eighteen historical civilizations to lead from the stone-age to the space age on your quest to build the world’s most powerful empire.

So no more rumors and no more speculation, Civ 5 is confirmed and guaranteed to come to the Mac platform.

We’ll keep you posted on more information when we get it.

Update on 11/23/2010: Civilization 5 for Mac has been released! The official release date of Civ 5 for Mac was November 23 2010.

You can order Civilization V for Mac from Amazon, which includes free shipping.

Great news for Mac gamers, Civilization 5 for Mac has arrived. We knew that Civilization 5 for Mac was coming soon but now the game has been released to the public after a “Fall 2010” teaser date.

We suspected they’d have Civ 5 for Mac launched well before the holiday shopping season, and they met that timeline. We will update shortly with system requirements, we’ll keep you posted.

The black screen bezel is featured on MacBook Pro, iMac, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Apple’s Cinema Display, nearly the whole Apple lineup. It’s a prominent and attractive feature that makes a Mac even more identifiable in the wild. Why didn’t the MacBook Air get this distinct trait that has become a staple of Apple products?

One word: weight.

The MacBook Air needed to be light, but the black bezel is tied to a glass screen. If you’ve ever picked up glass, you’ll know that glass has weight to it. In the end it must have proven to be just too heavy to include in the MacBook Air given its strict weight requirements. The MacBook Air is the ballerina of Apple’s lineup, it has to be svelte. Just like there are weight limits in ballet, there are weight limits for the MacBook Air. Sorry black bezel, you’re beautiful but you had to go.
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Restoring an iPhone to a previous backup is really easy, and though it’s fairly rare that you will need to restore an iPhone, or any other iOS device for that matter, it can still be necessary from time to time. What restoring from a backup does is pretty straight forward: it clears everything off the device, installs a clean version of the iOS system software, then recovers all personal stuff to exactly what it was like from the last backup. This is one of many reasons why making regular backups is recommended, particularly if you’re participating in any major iOS upgrades, adjustments, or tweaks (jailbreak or otherwise), because it lets you return to the last guaranteed functioning state of the device, with all of your data, apps, and customizations intact.

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Just when I thought my personal record uptime of 160 days on a MacBook server was exciting, one of our readers blew my uptime away… by almost a year!

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So now we know that “Back to the Mac” refers to iOS coming back to it’s parent operating system, Mac OS X. Basically Apple is deciding to take some of the good ideas of the iOS experience (the iPad received particular emphasis) and bring them to the Mac Desktop.

Apple provided a limited sneak peak at Mac OS X Lion, including the upcoming Mac App Store. Seeing is believing though, so read on for screenshots and more information about each item.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Features

Here are the main features reviewed by Apple, with screenshots to show them off where available.

• Multi-touch gestures – (we called it) – Apple knows that touch screen notebooks don’t work, trackpads and mice are the way to multitouch a desktop operating system. With this in mind, Lion will have advanced gesture support
• Mac App Store (we called it!) – The App Store revolutionized mobile applications, so of course they bring it to the Mac. Features are automatic installation, one-click downloads, automatic app updates, apps will be licensed for use on all of your Macs. This will be available first under 10.6 Snow Leopard in 90 days. On the developer side, the Mac App Store will have the same developer 70/30 split as the iOS App Store, and submissions will be accepted soon. See screenshot below of the Mac App Store:

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As we anticipated, FaceTime for Mac is now available… as a beta. If you have a Mac with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and you want try out FaceTime than this is how you would accomplish that.

FaceTime for Mac allows you to make FaceTime calls to iPhone 4 and iPod touch users directly from your Mac.

What’s interesting is that Mac FaceTime client is it’s own independent application, it was not built into iChat, although I bet this will change come the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion next summer.

You can see the FaceTime for Mac client running in the above picture from Apple, and yes that’s the new MacBook Air featured in the picture.

Download FaceTime for Mac

You can download the Facetime beta for Mac OS X directly from Apple.com.

Note that any modern Mac OS and Mac OS X system software versions include FaceTime by default and do not need to use this app, the beta is intended for Snow Leopard.

Update 6/5/2011: Apple has announced Mac OS X Lion release date is set for July, will cost $29.99, and is available as a download from the Mac App Store.

We were given a sneak peak at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion today, and Steve Jobs provided a release date: Summer of 2011. The Mac App Store (we called it!) will be available sooner, in just 90 days. FaceTime for Mac beta will be available to download immediately.

Want to see more? Check out Mac OS X Lion: Screenshots & Features

The iPhone Dev Team just released Pwnage Tool 4.1 for download. The latest PwnageTool update works to jailbreak the following devices with the 4.1 firmware: new Apple TV, iPad, iPod touch 3G & 4G, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G.

Why is the PwnageTool 4.1 release useful? Pwnage Tool allows you to restore to custom IPSW files, in other words, you can restore pre-jailbroken firmware while maintaining your current baseband, thus allowing you to use a carrier unlock like ultrasn0w.

Pwnage Tool 4.1 Download

Currently PwnageTool 4.1 is only available for Mac users to download, there are several ways to get the file. The approach the iPhone Dev Team recommends is to download the torrent file from ThePirateBay:

PwnageTool Torrent – Pirate Bay Link

Many people cant access PirateBay so your other options are to use the provided download mirrors. Here’s a few direct links:

Mirror 1: fsckyou.org
Mirror 2: iPodTouchMastrFR.com

If either of those downloads don’t work for you, the Dev Team provides an updated download mirror list here, scroll to the bottom of the page to see it.
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The Back to the Mac event is scheduled to be live streamed directly from Apple today.

To watch the live video feed, go to http://www.apple.com/ at 10 AM PDT using Safari on either a Mac or iOS device.

Here’s the message from Apple’s PR team:

Apple® will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com.

Our quick predictions: Mac OS X 10.7, new MacBook Air, iLife ’11… Enjoy!

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) will automatically connect to the internet and attempt to initiate connections with Adobe Online Services and Service Update, this will happen regardless of you disabling the updates within the Adobe preferences for some reason. If you want to turn off the ability for Adobe CS to access the online services, kuler extensions, Adobe ConnectNow, Service Manager, and online help, this is how to do it. The instructions work for Adobe CS4 and CS5.
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According to a recent unconfirmed report, the CDMA iPhone, dubbed “iPhone 3,2” is currently in “field test stage” and, surprisingly enough, includes a SIM card slot.

What does this mean exactly? Certainly easier production lines for Apple. And, perhaps future iPhones will be able to use whatever carrier they want. The addition of a SIM card slot would also make this new iPhone better for global roaming, where you can just buy a new SIM card for the local service (although a US purchased iPhone will need to unlock still).

The report comes from BoyGeniusReport.com:

The iPhone 3,2 could be the mythical CDMA + GSM/HSPA device that would support Verizon, AT&T, and the other current worldwide iPhone 4 carriers frequencies. The mid-cycle refresh would bring an updated antenna design for the current iPhone 4 and bring CDMA-compatibility; essentially, Verizon Wireless subscribers would have the same device as AT&T subscribers.

BGR has a reasonably accurate history of leaks and news, but like always this is just a rumor so take the information with a grain of salt. The debate is really about whether or not the upcoming CDMA iPhone will include a SIM card slot, nearly everyone agrees that the iPhone will be available on Verizon soon. Recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times suggest the Verizon iPhone release date is rapidly approaching, with the most reliable sources saying it may arrive as early as January of 2011.

The BGR report also indicates that the next iPhone 5 is currently in engineering verification phase. Most analysts expect an update to the iPhone 4 before the appearance of iPhone 5.

So you installed the limera1n jailbreak and now you want to use greenpois0n instead (or vice versa), what do you do? Using a tool called APTBackup, we can backup all your jailbroken apps, and then reinstall another jailbreak complete with all your previously installed jailbroken apps.

Yes, this process works to uninstall greenpois0n and install limera1n too. The procedure is the same on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

Uninstall limera1n/greenpois0n and install greenpois0n/limera1n

This is a several stage process. You’ll backup your jailbroken apps, then uninstall the existing jailbreak, then re-jailbreak the iPhone, and finally restore the jailbroken app backups. Here are the steps to follow:
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This has to be one of the coolest iMac mods you can do: mounting the iMac to a wall.

Does this look awesome or what? The mount in the picture above is the VESA iMac Mount Adapter Kit which for $29 is actually quite a bit cheaper than I thought it would be (compare to LCD TV mounts at $100+).

I’d never seen this done so well before but one of our readers sent in a couple pictures of this VESA iMac wall mount kit, it works for both the 24″ and 27″ iMac models, as well as the new Apple LED Cinema Displays.

A wall mounted iMac would make for a great Mac media center, or just a super clean looking desk. If you’re curious about installation, it doesn’t look too complicated. Basically you unscrew the existing iMac base and then replace it with a bracket that attaches to the VESA mount system.

Here’s a video (in German) of a guy performing the installation and setup on a 27″ iMac:
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The fastest way to get MP3 and m4a file info out of Mac OS X is using the Terminal and afinfo command. The command line tool you’ll want to use stands for Audio File Info, rather appropriately. You can try it out yourself with any audio file, though for the purposes here we’re looking at an mp3 or m4a file.

To get started, launch the Terminal and type this at the command line, specifying the path to the audio file to retrieve meta info and file details about:

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Is the Kindle and iPad war over digital reading finished already? Did the iPad lose because of the iBookstore? According to TUAW, the “iBookstore six months after launch is one big failure”, which is a harsh way to say there just isn’t enough available content. Let’s review this and the eReader battle between the two devices.

Amazon Kindle Store vs iPad iBookstore

The numbers tell the story. The Amazon Kindle Store has over 700,000 titles, including books and magazines. Meanwhile, the Apple iBookstore has only 60,000 titles, half of which came from a Project Goutenberg, a source of free copyright expired books.

If you’re a bookworm, it’s pretty obvious what your choice would be, right?

Well not quite, the iPad can also download the Kindle app for free which gives the iPad access to all of the Kindle Store content. Suddenly your library just expanded to be equal to that of the Kindle, and due to this I wouldn’t limit my purchase just based on the availability of the digital bookstores offerings.

iPad vs Kindle for reading books

The strength of the Kindle lies in reading. If you compare the iPad and Kindle screens purely for readability, it’s a no brainer who wins: the Kindle’s e-Ink technology produces amazingly crisp typography. This makes the Kindle the hands down winner of the eReader battle… if what you’re looking to do is read books.

I’ll say it again: if you’re an avid reader and you want the best possible eReader on the market, get a Kindle. The screen is freakishly good for reading thanks to digital ink, the available content is bountiful, and the device includes free 3G access – all for about 1/3 the price of an iPad.

The current iPad isn’t an eReader (perhaps the rumored 7-inch iPad with retina display will change this). If you want an all-in-one device that plays games, browses the web, has full access to the App Store, and can also read digital books, grab the iPad.

Is this competition really even fair? Are the two devices really competing against each other? I think unless the Kindle releases a color screen and an app store of it’s own, they’re competing in different markets. Each device has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and your purchase really needs to depend on what you want out of the device. If you have the money to spare, why not buy one of each?