I've often felt that 99 cents is the magic number for iOS games. At that price, it's an impulse buy; I'll grab it without a second thought. Even if I wind up not liking the game, hey, it was only a buck.

If you feel the same way, you'll appreciate this: EA Mobile has cut nearly every game in its iOS catalog to just 99 cents. And that includes a couple noteworthy new titles that just launched today.

I've played quite a few of the 70-plus games on sale, so allow me to make a few recommendations (with links to my previous coverage, where applicable): Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Lemonade Tycoon, Madden NFL 11, Mirror's Edge, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Reckless Racing, The Simpsons Arcade, and The Sims 3.

As for the new stuff, check out Battlefield: Bad Company 2, a multiplayer-ready port of the smash-hit console title. Normally, high-profile games like this one sell for at least $6.99 at launch, but, surprisingly, it's on the sale list.

Also launching today: Cause of Death, which looks to be a "CSI"-style mystery/adventure game. Sale price: yep, 99 cents.

According to EA, the sale will run for "a limited time." I asked a company rep to be more specific, but she couldn't provide an end date. Thus, these prices might expire today, tomorrow, Sunday night, or who knows when? My advice: grab the games you want right now, while they're cheap.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Mobile Opera may be driving the Norwegian browser company's growth, but that doesn't mean that the desktop browser is getting ignored. Debuting today, Opera 11 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, has only gotten more stable since the beta version of the browser launched last month.

The most request of the new features is the lightweight extension API framework, which brings to Opera a long-missing ability to directly add to and customize the browser. Having launched while the browser was in beta, there are already several popular extensions available, including ad-blocker NoAds; YouTube downloader FastestTube; Image Preview Popup for looking at images before loading the sites they're on; language translator Translate; and the well-known cross-platform, cross-browser password manager LastPass. Most extensions will install visibly as buttons to the right of the location bar. At the time of writing, there are 200 extensions in Opera's official add-on gallery, a small number compared with Firefox or even Google, but a reasonable rate of growth since the alpha debut of the feature in October 2010.

An Opera representative has stated that the company intends to keep its Widgets framework, supporting it and extensions concurrently. It's similar in concept to Firefox's Panorama but groups tabs only in the tab bar. To use it, drag one tab onto another. You'll see the bottom tab replaced by an arrow to the right of the tab. Click it and the tabs in the stack will slide out to one side. Mouse over the stack to see previews for all the tabs in the stack. To break up the stack, drag a tab off the stack.

Another change comes to the security badge system, which marks sites as "verified safe". Click on the gray "Web" globe icon to the left of the URL bar to check a site's status. Getting information returned was quick on some sites, yet occasionally slow to stalled for others. The badges are colored yellow for "secure," green for "trusted," and blue for when you're running Opera's Turbo mode, designed for assisting people surfing on slower connections. Opera's badge system includes a smart tweak: quick links for reporting a site as fraud or malware. Meanwhile, the Turbo badge will also display estimated data savings.

Other improvements include load-on-demand plug-ins, which can help reduce page-load time and mitigate some security threats from third-party plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Silverlight. The feature was impressively smooth in its implementation. Opera 11 claims performance improvement of up to 30 percent; the general improvement in performance has been improved as well. Opera says that Opera 11 is 15 percent to 20 percent faster than Opera 10.63 on Linux, and that the browser size on disk has been reduced by almost one-third.

Finally, the mouse gestures tutorial has been given a visual refresh, making it easier to learn them.

CNET's benchmarks of the browser weren't finished at the time of publication, and will be updated here later today. However, preliminary results indicated that the browser remains competitive with the stable versions of Google Chrome and Apple Safari in terms of page-load times, including cold-boot results. Next-generation browsers from Mozilla and Microsoft have only been released in beta and were not included in these tests, although their betas score relatively comparable speeds.

Although Opera 11 includes new features and improved performance results, it doesn't make great strides in its HTML5 compliance. This isn't a major problem, as HTML5 standards are still developing and Opera is known generally for being an early adopter of them. The browser already supports the video and audio codec WebM, geolocation, Web Workers, and App Cache. However, though Opera supports HTML Web fonts, it hasn't yet incorporated the Web Open Font Format, which it has co-sponsored. Opera spokesman Thomas Ford told CNET that the company expects to add support "sooner rather than later".

Opera remains a closed-source and niche approach to browsing that lacks the open-source appeal of Firefox or the corporate backing of Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer. Yet because of its longevity, in use since 1995, along with its competitive feature set, page-load speeds, synchronization, and mobile options, it's also a viable alternative to other browsers. A full review of Opera 11 is available on CNET Download.com Windows and Mac.

According to at least one study of mobile operating systems, Android is well on its way to world domination. With that in mind, we expect that at least a few of you have gotten--or will be getting--your lucky little mitts on a new Android phone this season. And what are you to do with that spanking-new device? Why, load it up with some great apps, naturally.

To that end, I set out to round up five essential apps for Android newbies. I'm not going to lie to you: narrowing down the list to a mere handful was quite a challenge. Of course, there are way more than just five apps that are worth a spot on your device, but the options laid out in the gallery below offer a good (and varied) selection to get you started. Better yet, they're all free.

If you're eager for additional options, check out our Android Starter Kit (with an update coming soon). And if--like me--you find the Android Market unhelpful for discovering even more apps, be sure to give AppBrain a whirl. The site and its companion app provide more detail and organization than Google's native store.

Is there an Android app that you just can't live without that didn't make the cut? Feel free to leave your own recommendations in the comment section below.

Originally posted at Android Atlas