8 Best Black Friday 2013 Apps for iPhone

Black Friday is a pretty big event. Many folks wait for it all year to save some money on the things that need (or don’t need). This year’s deals are expected to be pretty exciting (iPad Air, TVs, apps, Windows 8 goodies, …). Keeping up with Black Friday deals is now easier than ever thanks to all the deal sites that cover these types of events.

There are plenty of sites that provide previews of Black Friday ads ahead of time. You can always get to those ads on your computer. Why do that when you can have them all on your iPhone/iPad? Here are 8 Black Friday iPhone apps that help you find the best deals for Black Friday 2013 and future sales:

5 Ridiculous Apps that Kids Just Love

It’s no secret that there’s a wide chasm between what kids think is funny and what adults think is funny.   While you obviously can’t measure silly, these 5 fun apps will make you wish you could –  you’ll be rolling your eyes, while your kids are rolling on the floor.

1.  FACE MELTER
An absolutely hysterical photo deforming app.
iPhone, iPad | Age: 3+ | Price: $1.99

All these years later, this is still one of the funniest games in the iTunes Store.  I’ve shown this app to dozens of people (kids included), and every one of them laughed out loud.

You take a picture of your face or your friend’s face with your iPhone (or import one from your photo library), and then deform your features by dragging your fingers across the screen.   Once you’ve finished stretching your nose halfway across the screen or giving yourself basset hound eyes, you can animate your new self portrait by touching the movie reel icon (this is when first-timers usually scream with laughter and/or wet themselves).

The Elements In Action on iPhone

Anyone who has taken a course or two in chemistry understands the importance of learning and mastering the Periodic Table of Elements. You may not get it at first but practice makes perfect. Apps like The Elements In Action help you get a better understanding of Chemistry. This application explores the properties of the elements and helps you understand what makes certain elements unique.

Apple promises 'the Friday you've waited all year for' in Black Friday teaser

Nov 26, 2013 9:18 AMNo need to ceaselessly refresh Apple’s online store in your browser between now and Friday to see if the company is joining the rest of the retail world in rolling out post-Thanksgiving discounts. Apple confirmed it’s holding a one-day sale this Friday in a Black Friday teaser on both its website and via an email to customers.

My search for a smartphone that is not soaked in blood

Nokia smartphones. Of all the manufacturers, Nokia appears to have gone furthest to remove illegally mined tantalum from its supply chain. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

If you are too well connected, you stop thinking. The clamour, the immediacy, the tendency to absorb other people's thoughts, interrupt the deep abstraction required to find your own way. This is one of the reasons why I have not yet bought a smartphone. But the technology is becoming ever harder to resist. Perhaps this year I will have to succumb. So I have asked a simple question: can I buy an ethical smartphone?

The 18 year old whose smartphone watch could beat Apple’s iWatch to market

 

Simon Tian says he has in-hand a working prototype of something nearly unprecedented in consumer electronics: a smartphone the size of a watch. Not just a smart watch, but an actual, fully-featured smartphone running Google’s Android software that straps onto your wrist. Along with his team of nine at the Montreal, Quebec-based startup Neptune, he’ll be unveiling it in mid-April. Tian is only 18 years old—the founder and youngest member of Neptune.

Your Phone's Camera and Microphone Can Reveal Your PIN

Photo via Flickr/Till Westermayer

Cambridge security researchers have been hacking smartphone passwords using the devices’ own cameras and microphones.

Laurent Simon and Ross Anderson at the University of Cambridge used an app they called “PIN Skimmer” to capture passwords as they were entered into a Samsung Galaxy S3 and a Google Nexus S, both of which use number-only soft keyboards.

Android 4.4 KitKat, thoroughly reviewed

After three Jelly Bean releases in a row, Google has unleashed a major revision to the world's most widely used operating system. With the Nexus 5 comes Android 4.4 "KitKat." KitKat brings a ton of enhancements: support for hidden system and status bars, printer support, and lower memory usage. It also has a number of user-level improvements, including a new dialer, a Google-infused home screen, and a whole pile of UI refinements.

Look Ma, no wires! A mini-review of Google’s Nexus Wireless Charger

The Nexus wireless charger.

Andrew Cunningham

Wireless charging is hardly a ubiquitous feature in smartphones and tablets at this point. It's often optional—phones from certain carriers will have it, or you'll be able to add it to a phone using a special charging case. But if you pick a phone at random off the shelf, chances are good that it won't support wireless charging out of the box.

The State of Smartphones in 2013: Part I of the new Ars Ultimate Guide

It's been just under a year since the last time we examined the state of the smartphone. The intervening months have brought us the expected annual hardware refreshes and software updates, but it's striking just how similar things are at a high level.

A Gold HTC One? That’ll Cost You $4,400

Call that champagne iPhone 5S “gold”? Pffft. HTC and its 18ct gold paintbrush are laughing in your general direction. As leaked, HTC’s gold One has come to light today, bearing the MOBO Awards logo to celebrate the 18th anniversary of Europe’s urban music awards.