Social networking app Path hit the headlines yesterday after it turned out the company was taking users’ entire address books and uploading them to their servers.
It’s a big privacy violation, but Path’s hardly the only one doing this. In fact, computer engineering professor Mark Chang has just discovered that Hipster, the popular photo-filter postcards app, does the exact same thing as Path: sucks up your contacts and squirts them into their servers.
We often wonder about what the “woman behind the curtain” would look like when we use voice action apps such as Siri but for the Android alternative Iris, we now have a pretty good idea. Iris was an app created for Android by developers Dexetra and started as a tongue-in-cheek reply to iPhone’s Siri. It became immensely popular and currently has over 1 million installs. Things seemed to be going good for this Android Siri competitor until Gizmodo recently revealed the “woman behind the curtain.” It turns out ChaCha, the search engine behind the app, is a bigoted, religious zealot that may have some disturbing answers to some of your questions.
My parents never let me play with them as a kid because they were afraid I’d get shot by a trigger-happy cop, which is perhaps why, to this day, I get a little giddy when I hear or read the words “LAZER TAG,” and feel myself ethereally tugged away — John Carter like — to a distant world where I am a member of the Lazer Team, policing the galaxy for perps who can be non-violently terminated by aiming my ray gun at the conveniently placed sensors strapped to their back, head and torso.
So when I saw that Hasbro has just announced the next update of their Lazer Tag guns — and that these sets actually use an iPhone or iPod touch as an augmented reality display and HUD — I immediately got excited, then disappointed as I remembered my parents wouldn’t let me have one. But wait! I’m an adult now, and as an adult, I can wave around as many plastic toy guns as I want! Hooray!
Meet Niko, star of a cute-character platformer for iOS that involves the usual amount of bouncing, running, hopping and collecting things.
Yeah, that spinning beach ball looks all happy and fun, but the diabolical critter’ll make your system slower than the line at the central Los Angeles DMV on a late Friday afternoon. Not to worry — FreeMemory is here to help.
No, the free app won’t kick the little swine out to sea — but at least it’ll let you deflate it somewhat by keeping close tabs on the status of your RAM.
Crash analytics firm Crittercism released a new study this week, claiming that iOS applications crash more often than Android applications. After monitoring over 215 million apps across a wide range of different platforms, the report concluded that iOS 5.0.1 had the highest rate of application crashes. iOS in general also had more app crashes than its top competitor Android. These are interesting numbers that contradict the long held belief that iOS and the apps that run on it, are more stable than that of Android’s. So why such a large number of crashes on iOS?
A few months ago, Days of Wonder released the $2 iPhone version of their overwhelmingly popular, award-winning board game, Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride Pocket amazed everyone by including all the elements of the iPad version in a smaller, tighter, but just as engrossing package — only with one huge hole: While you could play real people around you via a Bluetooth connection, there wasn’t any way to play against people who weren’t in the same room with you. All that changed yesterday, making TTR pocket one of the best board game on the iPhone, right up there with chess and Words with Friends.
Our favorite cloud storage service has a nice little treat for anyone brave enough to beta test their latest app. Right now, Dropbox is offering up to an extra 5G of storage for testing out their new automatic upload feature. For every 500MB of photos and videos you automatically upload, Dropbox will reward you with a 500MB space bonus, up to 5GB. Automatic upload seems to be the primary feature added in this beta build, but here’s what they list as new on their site:
The Super Bowl is only a couple of days away and EA Sports has once again discounted their Madden NFL 12 to $0.99. If you missed out on the sale last time, you probably have until Sunday or Monday before this one expires so you’re going to want to act fast before it’s $4.99 again. If you didn’t see the features of the game the last time, here they are again:
Did you know that it’s incredibly easy to turn almost any document into a PDF directly on your iOS device, with a simple third-party app? That app is called PDF Converter from Readdle, the developers of a number of popular productivity apps for iOS. If you’re looking for a free PDF converter for iPhone, you can find all the essential tools in this guide. Here’s how to do it.
It’s been a of couple years since the social food finding photogasm app Foodspotting hit the scene, and now — thanks to many hours of hard work — the guys over at Foodspotting are proud to introduce Foodspotting 3.0. In what they’re calling “Pandora for food,” Foodspotting 3.0 has received a complete visual makeover with a Pandora-like interface for discovering and rating dishes. In version 3.0, user can:
Late last week, Valve released an official app for iOS and Android devices that allows gamers to stay connected to its Steam community wherever they may be. It was instantly popular with the Steam users who were able to gain access to it, but the only problem was, it was in beta testing and not many had that privilege.
But today the service is out of beta and available to all.
Fitness buffs love Runkeeper (and its accompanying iPhone app) for its ability to gather data from a wide variety of cloud-based services and gadgets they might use, so it can be stored and viewed in a central location; we haven’t exactly counted, but it’s a good bet that the all-knowing fitness service can import data from more fitness apps, services and gadgets than any other cloud-based fitness service on the planet. But with the nine more they added today, well, now it’s just getting ridiculous.
Since carriers aren’t allowed to install their own crapware on iPhones the way they do on other smartphones, their forced to release their own apps on the App Store. There’s myAT&T for AT&T customers and My Verizon Mobile for Verizon customers, but up until now, Sprint customers haven’t had a companion app to manage their mobile and data plans.
If you’re a Sprint customer, then, you’ll be glad to know that there’s now an official Sprint app on the App Store called Sprint Mobile Zone, which lets you manage your online account. It also sprays you with promotions and Sprint-related news articles, as well as gives you information about your device, including battery stats, data info, space remaining and more.
Thrillsville, I know, but these apps are occasionally useful to have floating around on your device, so if you’re a Sprint customer, you may as well get downloading.
There are a couple of solutions on the market that combine simple hardware with an iOS app to take control of your entertainment system, but Peel is probably the coolest and most easy to use solution that we’ve played with. Peel invisibly controls your entire entertainment system — TV, cable box, Blu-ray player, AV receiver, Apple TV, and more — without the extra hassles of plugging stuff into your phone and dealing with network passwords. Normally the Peel system retails for $99, but for the next 3 days you can pick one up from Fab.com for only $45.
Back in 1981, Bill Gates co-wrote a PC game called Donkey, commonly known (as some apps were back in those days) by its filename, DONKEY.BAS. If you’re old enough to remember those days and old enough to yearn for them, you might enjoy playing Donkey all over again on your iPhone.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNx6X4ZZFRA
QuasiDisk, a new file manager for the iPhone, has snuck into the App Store with a hidden talent that’s sure to get it pulled pretty swiftly. The $1.99 app doesn’t just provide a quick and simple way to transfer documents between your devices, but also the ability to tether your iPhone’s data connection with other devices via proxy.
Ready to Supercharge your Mac? We’ve got you covered! Packed full of goodies our Mac SuperBundle is hear to take your Mac to the next level. Run Windows in OS X with Parallels 7, Take Pixel-Perfect Screenshots with Little Snapper, Monitor your Mac at a Glance with iStat Menus 3, Create Powerful HTML5 Designs Easily with Flux 3, Plus Six Other Amazing Apps for Pennies on the Dollar! We’ve stuffed this package full of awesome-sauce and the savings are oozing out. You’ll get $471 dollars worth of software for only $49! That would be an amazing deal for Parallels 7 alone, but you’ll get so much more.
Want to know about everything you’ll get in the Mac SuperBundle? Head over to Deals.CultofMac for the full scoop and to make your purchase.
Yahoo has decided to do some pre-Spring cleaning and has announced they will no longer be supporting their lesser used apps. This may make some of you Yahoo app addicts sad, but for the rest of us, I’m sure we won’t mind. Yahoo has stated that as the mobile space moves at an insane rate, they too must keep up with what users want and are looking for in today’s market. That’s why they have decided to cease support of the following apps in order to make room for the future:
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As you walk the exhibit floor here at Moscone West, there are the much larger booths that make up the bulk of what you’ll see. But there are also some of the smaller booths — known as “pods” — that a lot of the mobile apps are housed in. There’s plenty of iOS apps being featured in this area of the hall, and plenty to discover.
One of my favourite apps I’ve found here is called — oddly enough — FavorIt, an app that lets you and your friends share what their favourite apps are with one another.
It looks like Valve threw a few extra coals into their engine after hearing about the 3rd party Steam app that was released earlier this month. They were not going to let any other app take their steam and so they have now released the official Steam app onto both Android and iOS. I’d like to say users are ecstatic, but there seems to be a catch.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Talking on stage about her love of technology and gadgets, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean rhapsodized her iPad, and told how she converted her husband to Apple technology.
A self-confessed geek, Orlean told how the iPad solved all the problems she had with working and traveling with technology. She had a Danger Sidekick, but would go nuts taking notes on it. She finds her MacBook too heavy to carry all day.
She also not afraid of losing or damaging her iPad. “I can it take with me to take notes but it won’t have my life on it if it gets lost or stolen,” she said. “It solved all of my problems.”
And her favorite app?
As a bit of a productivity nerd, it was great to see a couple of apps that revolve around that niche having a presence at the Macworld/iWorld media preview. One of these apps was Pocket Informant, which looks both elegant and compelling. And its available for both the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For those looking to get a little bit more productive and want a pleasurable-looking experience while doing so, this might just be the app for you.
Pocket Informant fully integrates your calendar, tasks, notes and contacts into one spot, which allows you to focus on everything you’ve got going on in a day. This is a bit of a departure from other productivity-type apps in that they tend to put the emphasis on your tasks and let everything else fade into the background. Pocket Informant keeps everything close at hand and visible so that you don’t miss out on somewhere you’ve got go, someone you need to get in touch with or something you have to do.
One of my favorite developers, Spacetime Studios, has announced yet another great project they are working on. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re the guys behind the hit cross-platform MMO Legend Series. From Pocket Legends to Space Legends, they have done everything right in the realm of true cross-platform gaming, and are pioneers in what I believe will be the future of gaming. Their latest project falls in line with the Legends series, and is entitled Dark Legends.
Last August, Spotify launched a public API for mobile developers to piggy back off of their system and release their own apps. The hope was the abiogenesis of a series of cool new music apps that pushed the boundaries of how we discover music, with Spotify’s library of 15 million tracks as the lifeblood.
The first app to really come from Spotify’s initiative and impress? SpotON Radio, a Pandora-like service built upon Spotify that allows you to create custom tailored music stations, share them with friends and sync them across the iCloud. Plus, it’s got a really swank visual aesthetic that just sings on iOS devices.