Only days following Zynga’s purchase of OMGPOP and Draw Something, comes an announcement with an impressive list of features that are coming soon to Draw Something.

Included in this list is the ability to save and share your drawings on Twitter and Facebook, an increase of the max streak from 99 to 999, the ability to pull down to refresh the game, an undo button for your last brush stoke, more words, and improved performance.

They’ve also acknowledged issues with coins, colors, and bombs not displaying, crashes, and bugs that keep you from completing your turn — with a promise to fix them all.

Additionally, the ability to chat with your partner will be coming in the future, though not in the next update.

This announcement comes as an email from OMGPOP, so it looks like Zynga plans to continue with the OMGPOP branding. This is probably a smart move since many people, like myself, are not huge fans of Zynga and how they conduct business. There’s no denying how they seem to already be positively impacting the game, though.

So who’s excited for this next update? If you haven’t already, head to the iMore forums and share your Draw Something username with other Draw Something players from our community!

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Every week the editors at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week’s selections include a Twitter app, several games, an app for DirecTV subscribers, an app for taking handwritten notes with your iPad, and a great interactive children’s app.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Tweetbot for iPad – @sethclifford

This week’s pick is one that’s been featured before, so I won’t need to say too much about it, but it’s worth bringing up again for a few new reasons. Tweetbot for iPad obviously has a lot of fans, and many of us were clamoring for this app for a long time before its release. When it finally arrived, I was sans iPad for a period of time, while waiting on the release of the new model. Those were dark times, and I’m happy to have made it through them mostly unscathed. Mostly.

Well, I’ve got that new iPad now, and I am really enjoying Tweetbot on it. It’s my favorite client on the iPhone because of its great design and functionality, and the iPad version is no different – it’s stellar. I’m weeks behind everyone gushing over it because I purposely waited to even look at it on a device until I had the new iPad, and man, it is something special. In addition to just loving it in general, I think it goes without saying that the update to the app to add retina graphics is nothing short of mind-blowing. It’s so smooth and so crisp on that new screen, I sometimes tear up a little, remembering how our collective eyes as a culture suffered with smartphones from a bygone era.

Listen, without wandering too far into wistful hyperbole, I’ll just say this: if you want the best Twitter experience on the iPad, with exceptional design and usability, this is your client. End of line.

$2.99 – Download Now

Contre Jour HD – @iMuggle

While looking for a game to test out the overheating new iPad theory, I wandered across Contre Jour HD. I’d never played it before and after reading the description, I decided I’d give it a go. I am completely addicted. It’s probably one of the best games I’ve played on my iPad in a while. And it looks absolutely gorgeous on the new retina display.

The premise of the game is pretty simple. You play Petit, a tiny blob of a creature who needs help roaming around his world. You’ll have to move the landscape and make him grab on to other objects to propel him towards the goal in each level – a shining orb of light. Along the way, you’ll want to pick up as many light particles as you can for a better score. You also get more points for completing the level quickly.

While the game is dead simple, it’s completely addicting. I’d almost describe it as a fusion of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope in some ways. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d highly recommend it. It’s available for both iPhone and iPad in HD. If you have a new iPad, it’s a gorgeous game to play. (As a side note, my iPad didn’t overheat while playing it.) : )

$2.99 – Download Now

DirecTV app for iPad – @Alli_Flowers

I will confess up front, that being able to pause my husband’s television before I even walk into the room gives me a feeling of power. But it’s super nice to have his attention without having to compete with whatever program is on, whether he’s paying attention or not.

The DirecTV app for iPad lets you control any tv in the house, whether it’s connected to your wireless network, or hardwired. I’ve found that it works even more reliably than the DirecTV remote that came with my receiver, and has a much more convenient UI.

Not only can I control all the tv sets in the house, I can watch some live shows, which gets me around my 2 show limit, providing my third show is on one of the channels in their list. Fortunately, since my 3rd channel is usually SyFy, I’m in business.

Live tv is not only limited to the lineup offered by DTV, but limited to your being connected to your home network. In other words – no watching live tv from work. You can, however, watch On Demand shows and movies from outside of your home network.

If you have DirecTV, and haven’t tried this free app, go get it now. If nothing else, imagine the look on your spouse’s face when you change the channel from another room!

Free – Download Now

Noteshelf – @gmazo1

I used to think that using a stylus with a touch screen was the future. I remember my original Palm Pilot and all my Treos with great affection. Then, the stylus gave way to the finger and styluses seemed so "90's" in their implementation.

For that reason, I shied away from handwriting apps for my iPad – like Noteshelf. After spending a week with colleagues who swear by it and after reading Leanna's great review: http://www.imore.com/2012/03/19/noteshelf-remarks-notability-ipad-handwriting-app-shootout/ I decided to give it a try.

What was I waiting for? This is an awesome app and my favorite new app on my iPad. I love being able to be creative with my notes. Noteshelf allows me to use different colors, highlight, erase, add emoticons and pictures and more.

I can customize my paper, the cover of my notebook and share notes to Twitter or Facebook or via email.

If that doesn't offer me enough creativity, I can go to the Noteshelf store and buy more papers, covers, stationery, planners and more.

All in all, this is a very powerful, fun and useful app.

Are you using Noteshelf? Do you have a favorite stylus to go with it? Join in the discussion in the forums!

$5.99 – Download Now

Pix: Pixel Mixer – @Bla1ze

There is a lot of photo filter apps in the iTunes App Store. Some are great, some — not so much. Pix: Pixel Maker is a fairly new entrant having been submitted only a little while ago but it has quickly warmed my heart (and my iPad — see what I did there?!?) with its filter options. Rather then sticking to allowing folks to only add one filter to their images, you can actually mix and match filters to get the exact image settings you want. It’s available for free in the iTunes App Store and is a universal application.

Free – Download Now

Modern Combat 3 – @simonsage

Since Modern Combat 3 went on sale this week for $0.99, I decided to give it a shot. (Pun intended.) It’s Gameloft’s latest “homage” to modern console and PC first-person shooters, complete with achievements, multiplayer, weapon customization, unlockables, a single-player campaign mode, and a whole lotta action.

I put a fair bit of time into the campaign mode, and despite being chocked-full of chest-thumping American bravado, the action was good, and the graphics, even on the iPhone 4, are smooth and sharp. I’m still trying to get the hang of using the accelerometer for control, but I think over time, it will become a lot more intuitive to use than the clunky dual-stick layout. You earn separate kinds of coins for playing multiplayer matches and single-player, but the abilities, weapons, and attachments you unlock carry over, which is great. In that way, I was able to gear up a little bit before getting into the multiplayer arena.

Much like PC games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, the competition online is intense. I felt the familiar pang of frustration when being taken down consistently before I could even pull up my reticle, but so far this has only served to steel my determination. With the wealth of unlockables, high production value, and competitive multiplayer, I could see myself playing this a lot, especially if I’m packing the new iPad.

$6.99 – Download Now

Angry Birds Space – @jorjlim

Angry Birds Space, completely reinvents the Angry Birds franchise. There's not many things you can do with a simple gravity slingshot game, however Rovio have completely rewritten the franchise, by… removing gravity.

Angry Birds Space sees the birds travel through a portal to chase the pigs who are still going after those eggs.

The classic characters you knew and loved have all returned with the same abilities. (with the exception of the yellow bird who can now fly in any direction, since there is no gravity) They have even introduced a new character called 'Ice Bird' who can freeze structures to make them easier to break.

You now have to fling the birds around the centre of gravity of astroids and planets, or through the vacuum of deep space. There are even added 'boss' level, to change things up even more.

If you were a fan of the originals, you'll definitely enjoy this sequel, and even if you weren't a fan of the originals, give this a go anyway because its got some completely new gameplay, and is nothing like the original 'earth-bound' games.

$0.99 – iPhone – Download now

$2.99 – iPad – Download now

Pinterest – @phishgirl3

Social networks are a dime a dozen these days, so it takes an interesting concept to make a new one stand out above the rest. Pinterest is still fairly new on the scene but it’s gaining popularity and becoming more mainstream pretty quickly. The concept behind Pinterest is kind of hard to explain; I look at it as the place to go if you hoard things on the internet. You can use it to save pictures for design ideas, recipes, images of things you want to create… there is no limit. If you see it on the internet, you can pin it to your boards, which are basically how you keep your pins organized. They’re like files for the images! Other people can browse your pins and re-pin comment and favorite them.

I was super happy when I saw there was a Pinterest app for iOS, and installed it on my iPhone right away. The app is well made, giving you access to your Profile, Activity on your pins/boards, your list of Followers/Following, and Explore, which offers you a list of categories to look through. While exploring you can re-pin, like and comment on your favorite things. A couple of neat options are also included, such as a bookmarklet you can install to be able to pin things to your boards while browsing the internet. You can even access your iPhone’s camera from within the app so you can pin things in the world around you. If you are signed up on Pinterest and enjoy using it, I highly recommend downloading the free app to go with it.

Free – Download Now

Little Fox Music Box – @llofte

My 18 month old daughter loves Little Fox Music Box. I am truly amazed with how long she can sit still and engage with this app. It’s literally the only thing that will keep her still for longer than about 90 seconds.

Little Fox Music Box has 3 songs: London Bridge, Evening Song, and Old Mac Donald, and with each song there is a scene that’s related to the theme of the song. Each of these scenes is filled with artwork and animations that your child can interact with. There are very little things on the screen that don’t react to touch. My daughter loves playing by herself or with an adult who identifies everything that can be touched.

For kids learning to read, the words to the songs are displayed at the top of the screen as they are sung. In Karaoke mode, the words highlight when it’s time to sing them.

Seriously, this is an awesome app for little kids and totally worth the $5 even though there’s only 3 songs.

$4.99 – Download Now

Tell us your pick!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

This week our iPhone Photography series is going to be a little different. Instead of exploring a new technique for taking better photos, we’re going to dive into the digital darkroom of iPhoto to improve an image we’ve already taken. It’s always worth capturing the best possible photo you can with your camera. Thanks to photo editing apps like iPhoto, however, when and if something goes wrong — the framing is a little off, the white balance or exposure isn’t perfect, the levels just don’t look right — there’s a lot you can do to fix it.

Perhaps you recall seeing this image in our lesson about negative space. I admitted to editing it a bit. What I didn’t admit to was how much editing I did. Sure, I did crop to a square and apply an Instagram filter like I mentioned, but I also fired up Photoshop to darken parts of the image even more.

Well, this is an iPhoneography series, so instead of using Photoshop for our edits, we’re going to use Apple’s new iPhoto app for iPhone and iPad. I’m going to use the iPad because I enjoy using the larger screen, but the same process can also be done on the iPhone.

• iPhoto for iPhone and iPad, $4.99 – Download Now

Before we get started, download the full resolution version of the original image so that you can do the edits with me. (Hold down your finger on the image and tap Save Image. This will save it to your Camera Roll.) Here’s what it should look like.

Huge difference from the final image I used, isn’t it? This is why learning how to edit your photos is also an important part of photography, especially for iPhoneographers who don’t have the luxuries and control that come with shooting with a DSLR.

Critique your image

When you decide you want to edit an image, the first thing you should do is sit back and critique it. What do you want it to look like? Why does it even need to be edited in the first place? You don’t just want to start blindly editing photos with a “we’ll see what happens” approach. This will result in images that look processed and overdone. This shouldn’t be your goal. (Side note: that type of look does have its place, but it’s not what we’re going to focus on and, it too, should also be planned and deliberate).

When I look at my original image, I see a lot of flaws. First, the orientation is wrong. To bring the viewer’s attention to the flame, my intended subject, it would be better cropped either horizontally, or as a square. Notice that I said my subject is the flame, not the candle. This is important. Know your subject.

Second, there’s a lot of distracting elements in the frame — especially the people and balloons. Note, however, that I intentionally composed the shot so that the flame, itself, didn’t have a person behind it.

Now that we’ve determined what’s wrong with the photo, we know what we want to fix. We need to crop the image with a landscape orientation and get rid of the distracting elements. The most natural way to do that is by darkening those areas.

Crop

We’re going to start by cropping the photo so that it has a horizontal orientation. There are many different ratios to choose from, and for this image, the important thing is to make sure that the ratio you choose doesn’t cut off the dripping wax as this is an interesting element of the photograph. The best choice for this image was 10×8.

To crop the image, tap the crop icon in the lower left corner. Then tap the settings icon on the bottom right and swipe to the 2nd page to select 10×8. To make sure the image is straight, adjust the dial at the bottom until the grid lines are perfectly lined up with the candle. I went about two degrees in the positive direction.

Adjust contrast and shadows

Next up, we’re going to adjust the contrast and shadows. This will darken the background a bit before we jump into using the darken tool.

To adjust the contrast, tap the exposure icon. It’s the one directly to the right of the crop icon. This will show you a line with some icons across the bottom of the screen. The first and last icons adjust the shadows and highlights, the middle icon adjusts the exposure, and the other two adjust the contrast.

Now let’s make our adjustment. Tap either one of the contrast icons and slide it away from the center. This will increase the contrast. You’ll notice that this will darken the background and make the flame and candle “pop” a bit more. Adjust this to taste. I went about a third of the way between the shadows icon and the exposure icon. I recommend moving it to where you think it looks good, then going a little bit less than that.

Finally, we’ll adjust the shadows. Again, adjust to to where you think it looks good. I went about halfway between the zone on the left. This edit made my background even darker.

At this point, our image has already greatly improved. Trigger the button next to the Edit button in the upper right hand corner to compare with the original. Already a great improvement! But we can do even better. Specifically, I want to get rid of the remaining evidence of someone sitting on the right and darken that white shirt on the left as much as I can.

Darken

Now we’re going to eliminate the remaining distracting elements by darkening those areas of the photo. To do this, select the Darken brush from the Brushes menu (4th icon in the bottom left corner). Next, tap the Settings icon in the lower right corner and toggle Show Strokes to ON. This will allow you to see exactly where you’re applying the brush.

Start painting the areas around the flame with your finger. Your strokes will show up in red and you’ll notice that the opacity increases the more times you go over an area. Make sure you go over the areas that are far away from the candle as much as possible. Also do your best to blend the opacity level of your strokes as you get closer to the candle. Otherwise, there will be an obvious line where you stopped applying the brush. Be patient. Take your time. Tap the undo button if you make a mistake. You can also use the eraser tool to erase your strokes.

Pay special attention to the area to the left of the candle and pinch to zoom into the photo to make sure you’re precise. Also make sure you cover the area with the shirt good since it’s so light.

When you’re done, trigger Show Strokes to off and take a look at your results. Then adjust the slider all the way to the right to make the area you painted even darker. If you notice any areas that need to be fixed, turn Show Stokes back on and make your adjustments. Turn the stokes back off and compare with the original photo again.

Looking much better! But notice that you can still still the shirt on the left side of the candle and the windows are also a bit distracting. Unfortunately, the Darken tool couldn’t completely take care of it. That’s why we’re going to see if there’s a filter that’ll help us out.

Filter

Feel free to experiment with the different filters, but I have narrowed it down to the two I think are best.

The third choice in the Artistic category does a great job of dimming the windows without drastically changing the look of the candle. However, the white shirt on the left is still fairly visible.

The third choice in the Vintage category almost eliminates the shirt entirely and also dims the windows a little bit. But it also reddens the already very red candle.

I think both of these filters make very fine choices. However, I wasn’t completely satisfied with either, so I went with the one in the Artistic category, saved it to my Camera Roll, then edited the saved image by just darkening the area with the white shirt.

Final result

Look at the difference! To see a larger comparison, just tap/click the image.

Now, that wasn’t too hard, was it? Usually, a few small edits can have a major impact on your images.

Assignment

Your assignment for this week is to edit your photos! Remember, the first thing you want to do is critique your image and decide on the changes that need to be made. If you need help, feel free to ask the iMore community for some suggestions. After you’ve made your edits, head to the iMore Photography forum and share your results! Make sure to include both the before and after shots!

The new Apple TV user interface designs, which debuted alongside the new 1080p Apple TV, are actually 5 years old and were originally tossed out by the late Steve Jobs, who didn’t like them. This according to Michael Margolis on Twitter, who claims to have “implemented much of the AppleTV 2.0 UI years ago”.

The comment was made in response to Aral Balkan, who asked, “Wtf happened, Apple, did a rainbow throw up at one infinite loop while having sex with a designer from Samsung?” Margolis added, “The new home page UI makes me cry.”

Thanks, though most of the product is the same. I also don’t like the top-bar-navigation on the app store UI.

Fun fact – those new designs were tossed out 5 years ago because SJ didn’t like them. Now there is nobody to say “no” to bad design.

Margolis closed out the exchange by saying, as far as he knew, “that whole team has left/been replaced”.

Seth Weintraub from 9to5Mac checked into Margolis on LinkedIn, and found him listed as both former Senior Software Engineer at Apple, and Professional Hobbyist, AppleTV. He’s currently listed as iPhone Software Connoisseur at Massive Health.

The new Apple TV user interface has been somewhat controversial, with some liking it and believing it hints at a future where apps can run on the Apple TV as they do on other iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. Others feel the icons are inelegant and poorly organized.

However, citing the lack of Steve Jobs being there to say “no” to bad design is somewhat specious. Some of the user interface decisions made by Jobs were just as controversial, including pinstripes and brushed metal on OS X, the new iTunes icon, and the skeumorphic trend on iOS involving plush leather, green felt, and various shades of linen.

If you’ve tried out the new Apple TV software, what do you think of it? Designed fine, or design crime?

Source: @yipe, @aral, LinkedIn via 9to5Mac

Okay, I admit it — the iPad really is magical. At least it is when it’s put into the incredibly talented hands of Charlie Caper and iMore reader Erik Rosales. The performance by Step2 Communication at MIPIM in Cannes, which Erik said required 7 iPads and one of Sweden’s best magicians, was on behalf of the Swedish capital of Stockholm.

I can’t even imagine how much practice must have gone into making this work. Amazing.

Following the launch of the new iPad there’s been a lot of discussion about how, and where or even whether, websites should update to support the needs of HiDPI screens like Apple’s Retina display. If users are going to be looking at websites on a Retina display iPad, and one day Retina display Macs, HiDPI Android and Windows displays, and other high density screens, having them look as good as possible is a definite concern.

Bjango’s Marc Edwards previously wrote about why it might take a while for developers to upgrade their apps for Retina display graphics, and has written several posts and how to include Retina graphics in design workflows.

The web, unfortunately, is nowhere near as controlled environment as the App Store.

Apple, of course, updated their iPad page for Retina display right away. According to Jason Grigsby of Cloud Four Blog, they’re doing it with image_replacer.js.

What they've chose to do is load the regular images for the site and then if the device requesting the page is a new iPad with the retina display, they use javascript to replace the image with a high-res version of it.

The downside of this approach is that it’s expensive, especially if you’re serving all images this way, and the images are big. Bandwidth costs money and making every image 4 times larger (or more) means paying higher server bills. Serving a regular image and then switching to Retina is even more expensive, because you’re serving both images to Retina devices. (Granted there aren’t many yet, but their share will only grow.)

Phil Webb of Mobify.com offers several good pieces of advice, including prioritizing which images really need to be Retina (like product heroes), that text should be served as text and not images (we’re in the age of TypeKit, after all!), creating double-sized images that are constrained by CSS width and height attributes, and the use of mobify.js.

Mobify can detect extra-high resolution displays, like the iPad 3 Retina and iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s with Retina, and serve them higher quality images.

And unlike many other techniques, like the approach Apple has taken to delivering Retina-quality images by just double-serving images, it lets you just serve the right image to the right device. So page performance is always as fast and snappy as possible.

On Quora, Read it Later developer Steve Streza promotes the use of CSS background images, the background-size attribute, sprite sheets, and media queries.

The big advantage here is that you can target specific screen scale factors with CSS, using a trick known as CSS media queries. This lets you specify entire CSS files, or parts of CSS files, to load for devices at 1x scale, at 2x scale, and other scales (as well as ranges of scales). This means that 1x scale devices are only loading 1x assets, and 2x scale devices are only loading 2x scale assets.

When it comes to photography on the web, Duncan Davidson, working with Streza, figured out that WebKit (the rendering engine behind Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, webOS, BlackBerry’s Torch, and other browsers) put limitations on image sizes that could conflict with serving Retina-calibur graphics. The workaround is to use progressive JPGs. But currently comes at a price.

Now, before you go reprocessing all your photos—and keep in mind that you can't export progressive JPEG out of Lightroom or Aperture, so this isn't an easy undertaking—please understand that this is just sorting out how to push a high DPI image to an iPad Retina display. Doing this well for more than a one-off example is going to take a lot more work, not the least of which is sorting out how to decide when to push a progressive JPEG at what size for the right client and bandwidth combinations.

So while it’s early days and there are no clear standards for implementing cross-platform, cross-browser HiDPI graphics, there’s a lot of experimentation being done. We consciously made the choice to use as much CSS as possible with our last iMore redesign, and I think that paid off. We’ve also replaced our previous, PNG background logo image with a 2x icon graphic and TypeKit text. We need to tweak it some more, but it already looks better on the new iPad. Likewise, we’ve used higher density Team iMore pictures in the sidebar for a while now, and are going to be rolling out more of them into the rest of the fairly static page elements.

If you’re working on adding Retina/HiDPI support to your website, jump into our Iterate mobile design forum and let us know how you’re doing it and how it’s working.