News

You're not experiencing iPhone 5 déjà vu. Last year major iPhone carriers and retailers started blacking out employee vacations for what we all thought would be the iPhone 5 release, and it seems to be happening again. A "trusted Verizon employee" told TechCrunch Verizon has blackout out vactations from September 21 to September 30 in anticipation of a new iPhone.

Verizon's blackout supports an earlier report which claimed Apple will begin selling the next generation handset on September 21. If true, you can expect Apple stores and other iPhone carriers such as AT&T and Sprint, to begin blacking out the same dates for their employees in the near future.

A German wireless carrier also seems to think the iPhone 5 will be available in September. 9to5Mac published an email from Mobilecom Debitel informing their customers about a fall iPhone release. Here's the translation for the picture above:

Skype updated their iPhone and iPad apps to version 4.1 on Tuesday. The upgrade brings a new photo sharing feature, a few minor bug fixes and minor visual improvements. The photo sharing feature requires that both users are connected to Skype’s instant messaging service to work.

If sharing pictures of food is not your thing, Skype 4.1 is also supposed to improve the app’s battery performance, plus fix a bug related to Bluetooth and calls. Existing users can upgrade to version 4.1 starting today.

The popular iOS game Samurai vs Zombies has added an all-new Zombies Rising game mode. Players can now play as the Zombies against their former allies the Samurai.

Samurai vs Zombies is a side-scrolling defense game where players must defend their samurai village against zombie waves. Players can use a combination of their main samurai warrior, towers, magic and allies to defeat the undead.

You can choose up to six upgradeable allies, two magic spells and one charm before each wave. You then collect points to release your allies in waves to confront the zombie onslaught. You can also use your main samurai warrior to battle the undead, and build towers to defend your village. The game is over when your main warrior dies or your village is destroyed.

One of the long-awaited improvements to FaceTime is the addition of 3G cellular calling. When Apple's video calling service launched there was some disappointment that it was limited to Wi-Fi only. With the release of iOS 6 FaceTime will be available over cellular networks on the iPhone 4S and later.

There are additional limitations depending on the carrier, and the latest has been announced by AT&T Mobility. MacRumors reports that customers will only be able to make FaceTime calls over cellular with a subscription to a Mobile Share data plan.

The makers of Tweetbot reassured their users that Twitter's new rules for developers won't affect Tweetbot for Mac or iOS devices.

Twitter made it harder for third party clients by announcing stricter guidelines about how the Twitter API is used. Paul Haddad broke down the API changes and what the mean to Tweetbot on the Tapbots blog.

Haddad said Twitter's required authentication on every API endpoint won't affect Tweetbot, and could possibly be helpful.

"The new rate limits that are part of the v1.1 API will likely end up being a good thing, instead of having a fixed block calls that can be made across the entire API the limits will be based on specific actions. We actually expect this to minimize the chances of being stuck in 'Twitter Jail'."