Amateur Surgeon 3 the adult swim game from Turner Broadcasting joins the top free iPhone apps list this week at No. 2, according to research from AppData. The iPhone game challenges players to operate on mutant animals with a chainsaw.

Below, we’ve listed the top free iPhone apps of the week. The list links to Inside Network’s research about the individual apps, including historical charts, developer information and download information.

To support Mediabistro’s Media App Summit, we spotlight the top free apps every week–helping our readers discover, enjoy and analyze successful content. Read more

Cupcake Kitty by Mary Matthews is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

This is a short mystery novel about cat detectives. Check it out: “When a singer at an engagement party dies, romantic 1920s detectives, Grace and Jack, and their magical cats, Tatania and Zeus, jump on the trail of a killer that leads to Tijuana and a bootlegger’s doll: Cupcake Kitty.”

Amazon has the free download through August 12th.

For more free eBooks, check out our 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks list, as well as our Free eBook of the Day archive.

Global tablet sales will pass 381 million units in 2017, according to a new report by Forrester. Tablets will become so mainstream that one in eight humans on earth will own one, representing 29% of online consumers worldwide, according to the Global Business And Consumer Tablet Forecast Update, 2013 to 2017 report.

eBay Deals created an infographic called, “The Great Tablet Debate,” which explores consumer preference in tablets.

According to the graphic, Android tablets have the most market share, but the iPad is still the most popular device. Check it out: “Google’s Android system accounted for 56.5% of the tablet market in the first quarter of 2013, whereas Apple’s iOS achieved 39.6%. iPads still dominated though: Apple sold 19.5 million units in Q1 2013, while Samsung sat in second place, having sold 8.8 million of its Android based tablets.”

We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump. Read more

D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Library is proving that libraries aren’t just for books – they’re also for 3D printing and book-making. The library is using its $3.4 million grant to provide a publicly accessible 3D printer and an Espresso Book Machine for on demand book printing – great for students and self-publishers. Printing is five cents per gram plus $1 (they say most print jobs costs between $1-$5). The library also has plans to include a “Dream Lab” where users can collaborate on projects ,test drive tablets and e-readers prior to purchasing, and also publish personal novels.

Library manager Nicholas Kerelchuck is optimistic about the library’s 3D printing service as an educational tool:

They’re learning math skills, engineering skill, hard science skills…this is future job experience. I think that in 10 years if someone has experience using a 3-D printer, they are far ahead of the curve.

Read more

Edward Snowden’s personal email provider Lavabit has shuttered its email service, active immediately. Instead of complying with government orders, the email service provider ended all email service on Thursday and is continuing the fight in appeals court. Further, the company is under federal gag orders, presumably from US secret courts, to remain silent on the details.

Here is the posted message from Lavabit’s CEO Ladar Levison detailing the decision:

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on—the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests. Read more

Most smartphone owners have dropped their phone once or twice, but a new Android app game from Norwegian developer Carrot Pop may lead to an increase in phone accidents. The app is called Send Me to Heaven (S.M.T.H.). It encourages players to throw their  phone as high as they can and then catch it in order to score points. Users can save their scores to the Carrot Pop server and compare them against the scores of other players.

Using the phone’s accelerometer, the app measures the height that the phone reaches as it goes up in the air. The higher its thrown, the higher the points. Hopefully players will actually catch their phones and they won’t end up smashed on the street beneath players. The company’s disclaimer  says that they aren’t liable for any damage to phones hurt in game play.

It may be an app worth downloading, the week before you upgrade to a new phone.

Ever wondered what Wikipedia looks like as it is being edited? Listen to Wikipedia has created an animation that is updated in real time as Wikipedia is edited. Every time a subject on the site is edited, a bubble with the name of the subject in a different colored ball and then fades out as new topics populate the screen. When a new user joins, their name flashes at the top of the screen. Think “Braniff Airlines” next to “Breaking Bad,” “Gholam-Hossein Elham,” next to “squat (exercise).”  All of this movement is happening to the soundtrack of soothing electronic music. It’s pretty cool to look at Wikipedia in this way.

Here is more about the project:

Listen to Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. The sounds indicate addition to (bells) or subtraction from (strings) a Wikipedia articles, and the pitch changes according to the size of the edit. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site — you can welcome him or her by adding a note on their talk page.

(Via Gawker).

Do you have a hard time keeping up your journal? Narrato wants to help make it easy for you to record your ideas and memories through an iPhone app that is as easy to update as Facebook.

Using the app you can create journal entries that are short and sweet or long and thought out. You can write text or select images from your camera roll to share. You can import select tweets and photos and check-ins from Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare. You can even import weather and location details to help set the mood or remember the location.  The journal content appears in a timeline, not unlike a social media feed, but it’s private.

Perhaps you need a journal for a novel that you are working on, and another to take notes for a feature story that you are writing. A cool feature in the app is that you can create multiple journals. It also works offline, which is great for a travel writer who is out of range. Read more

Should babies use apps? The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Fisher-Price and Open Solutions.

The complaint challenges these companies on the claim that “apps for tablets and cell phones are educational for babies.” Laura Moy of the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law is working on the complaint with the advocacy organization. She offered this statement in the release:

These companies are violating federal laws that protect consumers by making totally unsupported and unsubstantiated claims about the educational value of their products … And not only are they breaking the law, they are unfairly taking advantage of well-meaning parents who want nothing more than to help their babies get ahead of the curve. The Commission should stop these practices and make crystal clear that if companies want to market apps as educational for babies, they must have evidence to back up their claims.

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