Co-inciding with her latest TV series, Nigella Lawson’s latest foodie app, Nigellissima is now on the App Store. The theme is simple, delicious Italian food. Nigella, as always, makes amazing dishes look effortless.
The new app is free, but huge, demanding 750MB of storage space on your iOS device. That would be OK if it was packed with useful content. But it’s not.
If there were ever a time for Google to play “good guy” it would be now. Apple has simply been piling up the negative criticism with everything from its ridiculous legal attacks to its latest Mapsgate debacle. While Google has been going down the wrong path by setting itself up to bite back (see Motorola Mobility), I believe now to be the perfect time to turn the other cheek. Specifically with their Maps service.
The iPhone 5 has been a massive success for Apple. It’s only been out a week, but it’s already the fastest-selling iPhone in history, racking up 5 million units sold during its first three days of availability. But this isn’t just having a positive affect on Apple’s revenue; it’s also big business for iOS developers, who are seeing massive boosts to their download figures.
As we reported on Tuesday, Instagram has updated its iOS app to introduce support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6. It’s a welcome update to those enjoying a new 4-inch display, but it’s not all good news: Instagram also pulled live filters from the iPhone 5. It has since confirmed that live filters will soon be phased out of the iOS app completely, but for now, there is a workaround for those who miss them.
Facebook has released the latest version of its SDK — version 3.1 — to iOS developers. The update brings a number of great new features, such as native Facebook login for third-party apps, native sharing sheets, and more, and Facebook promises that it will make it “easier to build more immersive social experiences, as well as better ways to distribute and promote your app.”
Did you want to get an iPhone 5 on Friday, only to find out that they’d been sold out? Word is that Apple will start taking personal pickup orders starting at 10pm tonight. You’ll have another chance soon.
Evernote has updated Skitch, its wonderful image editing tool, to make it a universal app, and to introduce a stack of new features. The app was previously exclusive to the iPad, but now you can use it to annotate pictures of your cat on your iPhone, too. What’s more, the update also brings full Evernote integration, cross-platform syncing, and more.
When Apple releases iOS 6 this week, the built-in YouTube app on your iOS devices will disappear the moment you update your devices. But you won’t miss it, because right on cue, Google has launched its official YouTube app for iPhone, and it’s available to download now.
Whether you love her delicious looking meat dresses or not, there’s no denying that Lady Gaga is one of the biggest names in music right now with a bevy of singles that have launched her into superstardom.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Lady Gaga wants to do something new with her next album that she’s working on. Earlier today Lady Gaga revealed that her next Album, Artpop, won’t just be a couple of tracks burnt onto a cd, but it will be a “completely interactive” experience because she will be releasing it as an iPhone and iPad app.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a new music app called MUSaIC, that promises to help you rediscover your all those albums you forgot you had. We’ve also got a great new photography app called Etchings, which turns your photos into etched illustrations; a big update to Dolphin, one of my favorite third-party browsers on iOS; and more.
Index Card allows users to organize their stories, articles or thoughts without adding a lot of unnecessary weight to the app. When I first tried Index Card about two months ago, I tried it against a number of other apps that contained similar index cards features. For the sheer act of organizing a story, which is why I originally downloaded the app, Index Card came out on top above other apps like, for example, Storyist. Storyist, while working great as a story writing app, didn’t offer some of the features in its index cards feature that the Index Cards app offered. And if you want to check out the app, now’s a good time — it’s on sale for $2 (from $5) till early tomorrow morning.
Looxcie today launched their own Facebook channel, along with an update to their free live-streaming app — called LooxcieLive that turns any Android or iOS device into a video broadcast camera that streams video straight to your Facebook feed.
Of course, Looxcie’s isn’t the first app to do this; Utsream did the same thing just a week or so ago with their own app, Broadcast for Friends (with the gag-me-cute acronym of BFF). The difference here is that Looxcie’s Facebook channel can also serve up live broadcasts from Looxcie’s own hardware — which may make first-person-perspective shooting easier than, say, duct-taping your smartphone to your forehead (snicker all you want, we’re sure it’s been done). And, of course, Looxcie is first out the gate — and the only Ustream to the punch with an Android app.
When Twitter released its new guidelines last week, it quickly became clear that third-party clients would be hit hardest by the company’s latest rules. However, it seems third-party developers aren’t quite as concerned as the rest of us. Tapbots quickly confirmed that Tweebot development wouldn’t change, and now Iconfactory has confirmed that it will continue development on an “all-new” Twitterrific as planned — unfazed by Twitter’s new rules.
Many folks add events to their Calendar app on their iOS device the same way they’ve added events on paper since the way back days before smartphones and personal information managers. They flip to the date they want to add an event to, tap on the day, and then add it there.
This works, yes, but it can get tedious, with all the arrow tapping. What if your event is a couple years out? Even in month mode, tapping through 24 months is bound to get tedious.
There is, of course, an easier way.
Even with the iPad eating away at the time we spend in front of the bigger screens — in my case, the iPad is my screen of choice when watching Netflixed TV shows — cable subscriptions still have a ton of appeal. Want to watch the Olympics live on your iPad via the official NBC app? You’ll need a cable subscription; and then there are all the recent great cable shows: Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc.
But you’ll need a guide to sort through the mire, and that’s where the i.TV app and your trusty iPad or iPhone comes in.
Minimalist weather apps must be the current hot trend among developers right now because we’ve seen a slew of pretty new iOS weather apps hit the App Store recently. If the last three weather apps we covered haven’t quite done it for you, maybe Partly Cloudy will.
Partly Cloudy is different from most weather apps in that it displays all the information you would need to know for a single day in one unique and compelling infographic. Modeled on a traditional clock face, Partly Cloudy’s infographic presents weather data in a fun new way that’s also very useful.
PreviewMaker is a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones that’s likely to be particularly useful to app developers, theme designers, reviewers, and more. It takes all the screenshots you’ve taken on your iPhone and applies an iPhone-style frame, meaning you no longer need to edit each one and add it manually.
Popular and useful note-taking and synchronization app Evernote has just updated its Mac app to version 3.30. The new version adds new keyboard commands, a new premium user account, new user controls and LinkedIn support, which is also now available in the web-cased Evernote client. In addition, Evernote sports a handy slideshow option for notes that involve pictures. This will look really nice using Evernote’s new Retina display support.
Betaworks purchased Digg, the social news aggregator, earlier this month. In that short span of time, the purchasing company has rebuilt Digg from the ground up to include editorial content instead of user-promoted news stories as well as better performance across the site.
In addition, a new iPhone app launched right alongside the revamped web site, giving iPhone users a new app-based interface for the site content. Betaworks promises more features to come soon, including personalization, commenting features, more accessible data, and some API development — all great stuff that promises Digg may not be as dead as some have claimed.
Facebook has just introduced a new feature for their official Facebook for iPhone and iPad app that gives users Instapaper-like abilities to save posts shared on Facebook to read later. Now you too can collect your friends’ most embarrassing social network blunders in a favorites folder for posterity! Oh, and links you want to read later too, of course.
LiveClock, a tweak from Ryan Petrich that animates the Clock app’s icon to show the time, was once one of the first tweaks I would install after jailbreaking my iPhone. But after installing iOS 5, I had to live without it — because it just wasn’t compatible. Now, nine months after iOS 5 made its debut, it is!
I’ve been a Viber user for sometime now, but I’ve always been frustrated with its lack of support for group messaging — something I believe every messaging app should do from day one. Thankfully, this is one of the features introduced in Viber’s latest update, available on Android and iOS today.
Art. It’s something we all aspire to from the earliest of age and a pursuit of all humankind, including ancient cave and modern city dwellers, folks from the suburbs and people from the Renaissance. Head into any art museum and you’ll see paintings along the walls made with a variety of styles, techniques, and philosophical points of view.
Would you like to “brush up” on your painting skills? Practice drawing with colored pencils, pen and ink, water colors? How about acrylics, oils, or pastels. You can on your iPad with Art Set, a $0.99 app from developer LOFOPI.
Clueful, from antivirus experts Bitdefender, is a great little app for iOS that tells you which of your apps are accessing your personal data, and exactly what data they may be interested in. We wrote about it back in May when it first hit the App Store, and I liked it so much that I included it in one of my must-have apps roundups.
But it seems Apple wasn’t so keen, because it has now yanked Clueful from the App Store, and no one knows why.
I use my iPhone camera to keep track of a lot of things. When I’m in the bookstore, I take photos of books I want to buy, or show friends. I take pics of meals to track what and how much I eat, and I take photos of my kids and pets as often as possible.
I don’t take video that often, though it has been known to happen. However, I can really see the utility in having some sort of audio recording capability along with my photo taking – sort of a quasi-video thing – and Phonogram does just that.