Someone must use Facebook’s chat system, because the social networking giant just released Facebook Messenger, a dedicated iOS app that allows you to send and receive messages or chat with friends on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It even comes with push notifications so you won’t miss any messages.
More interestingly, though, Facebook’s Messenger app contains files that hint at future video calling functionality to come.
A button-cute 10 year old girl may have just set a new prestigious record. It’s not for the largest number of consecutive jump rope skips, or for chewing a piece of gum for the longest time, or even for collecting the most Facebook friends. It’s for identifying a zero-day exploit in a number of iOS and Android games! Isn’t that cute?
This week’s roundup must-have apps features the long-awaited Skype app for the iPad, a beautiful new music app from Rdio, the quickest and easiest way to sell your old gadgets through eBay Instant Sale, and a new digital magazine from AOL that’s tailored just for you.
Despite Apple’s best efforts, you can make a bootable install disk of Mac OS X Lion… but it’s not for the faint-hearted, or those who aren’t tech inclined.
Luckily, there’s an even easier way to make a bootable OS X Lion disk now. It’s called Lion DiskMaker, and it turns making your own installable Lion USB key drive into a one-click affair.
Apple has introduced a new feature in Mac OS X Lion called Resume. Resume will automatically reopen all the windows you had open the last time you used an app after you relaunch it.
Not a bad trick for some apps, but for some others it can quickly be really annoying. Here’s a tip on how you can avoid it altogether.
Qualcomm launched its augmented reality SDK for iOS yesterday, allowing app developers to create impressive augmented reality apps for our devices. While augmented reality is nothing new to iOS, Qualcomm’s SDK should mean more AR apps in the App Store because it makes it easier for developers to create apps for a number of different platforms.
One of the hallmark user features in OS X Lion is the iOS-like Launchpad. From the Launchpad, you can view, open, organize, and manage all of your Mac apps just like the iPhone and iPad.
While some may love Launchpad, many have voiced complaints over the confusing nature of how Launchpad handles Mac apps. In this post, we’ll show you how to completely clean out your Launchpad and start over.
Well, that didn’t last long: just a few hours after being yanked from the iOS App Store for failing to comply with Apple’s revised in-app purchasing rules forbidding direct links to outside, web-based e-stores, Google Books has been re-instated, sans the offending link.
Nicely done, Apple. Looks like no one can afford to play hardball with you on this, not even Google or Amazon.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing guidelines to monitor a “small number of mobile apps.”
Before you start wondering whether the feds are going to jump into your pocket along with your ever-present smartphone, it doesn’t look that way yet.
Are you stressed?
Of course you are. We’re all stressed. What with global economic meltdown, internet security rapidly becoming a joke, unrest in Libya and the Middle East, gas prices soaring, even our beloved newspaper barons under attack from pretty much everyone. It’s a stressful time.
What we need is something soothing to calm our furrowed brows. What we need is a cup of tea. And some pictures of kittens.
The state of software patents in the US is very reminiscent of the feudal system during the medieval ages. In terms of the US app development scene, you have large companies, like Apple and Google, that provide the platforms for developers to create and innovate on.
Innovation on these platforms (platforms like iOS and Android) is regulated by communication and frequent lawsuits between patent holders. As of late, attacks by large patent companies on mobile indie developers have caused devs to flee the US to escape otherwise-unnecessary legal fees and infringement ramifications.
Does saving over $300 on 10 of the best apps for the Mac sound like a good deal to you? We think so too.
The Mac Superbundle consist of 10 Mac apps for $49. Apps in the bundle, like Parallels 6, usually run for about $50 or more, so check inside to see if something catches your eye.
On Spotify’s homepage, one of the quotes they prominently use as an advertising blurb was written by my friend and old-Wired colleague, Eliot Van Buskirk, who once famously wrote that Spotify is “like a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.”
They’re right to use it. It’s a great description. Spotify doesn’t have every song in the world — just 15 million, in fact — but boy does it feel like it. That’s not just because of Spotify’s huge library of licensed songs, though. It’s because Spotify seamlessly integrates into iTunes to supplement itself. It’s a true iTunes in the Cloud.
An increasing’App-etite’ means more iOS downloads, higher prices for Apple’s App Store. Along the way, apps are being downloaded at triple the rate of song tracks, one analyst said Monday.
Billing itself as the “World’s Smallest Keyboard,” The FlickKey Mini is a $2 iOS text editor and note taking app that offers the bare minimum of features. Look more closely, though, and FlickKey Mini looks a lot more interesting. Far from being just App Store dross, FlickKey Mini could offer a preview on how we’ll type on the next iPod Nano.
It isn’t a secret that Apple is killing support for Rosetta in OS X Lion 10.7 the first version of OS X that won’t support the PowerPC platform and apps designed to run on it. All applications requiring Rosetta support turn into “tombstones” that can no longer be executed after upgrading to OS X Lion. Here’s what they look like and information on what to do about it.
Oooh, this is nice. Capture is a one-trick video recording app for iPhones that reduces the whole concept of snapping a video down to its very basics.
Magic Hour is a photo app for people who love the filter effects you get from apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic.
Today’s June 30th. That’s an important day for app developers. It’s the day Apple expects app makers to comply with new guidelines saying you can no longer link directly to a way to buy in-app content out of app. Hulu Plus has already jumped through that hoop, but you know who hasn’t? Amazon with its Kindle app.
Apps, those tiny games and other bits of code on your iPhone or iPad, are adding up to serious money. After doubling to $14.1 billion this year, revenue from apps will generate more than $36.7 billion by 2015. But can web apps cash-in on this goldmine?
One of Windows 8’s key tablet features is the ability to run two apps on the same screen side-by-side. It’s a feature that iOS 5 has yet to adopt, but that hasn’t stopped one jailbreak dev from swiping the idea and creating a hack that can allow two or more iPhone apps to run side-by-side on any iPad. Sick.
The first travel guide apps for Cuba are arriving in iTunes as a record number of Americans visit the country.
iCuba is billing itself as the first travel app for the island nation. In truth, it arrived in iTunes about a month after the Cuban Beaches in HD app, which offers hotel as well as beach info, and the Havana Travel Guide which promises an augmented reality feature. There are also a number of map apps for Cuba.
iCuba is offered in English, Spanish and Italian for $5.99. There are a few hiccups — notably, the English translation offers a category of “luxory” hotels — and other tourism info looks scarce. Still, the maps are available offline which makes consulting them easier when traveling and you can make hotel reservations via the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch versions.
The Havana Travel guide for $4.99 offers up to five days of itineraries, hotels and restaurants by budget range, nightlife info, public transport and safety tips.
Havana Good Time, by resident expat author Conner Gorry, promises to “open doors to the forbidden city” with 160+ entries that will have you living like a local. If you want to check out the $2.99 app, though, you’ll download it in the U.S. iTunes store before you go — since restrictions will keep you from getting it when you are actually local.
The bump in travel to the communist-ruled island is attributed to the U.S. government easing some travel restrictions to Cuba, mostly for “purposeful” travel (family, some business and religious activities). However, a battle is currently ensuing to turn back restrictions to the Bush-era bans.
Via iPhone Italia
Here’s a little gem I found on the App Store this week. +Loop is a video recorder app for iDevices, but it stands out from the crowd because it records multiple mini video clips in one, and costs nothing.
If your audio taste is anything like mine, you’ll want to mute this music video for “Undivided,” the first single for the group Blush, feat. Snoopy Dog. It’s like someone vomiting jolly ranchers down your cochleas.
That said, make sure to watch it, because it was made by animator Shawn Harris using iOS app Brushes. Impressive, right? And we have the making off too!
Here’s a great post over at 37 Signals, posing the question: how many of the apps on your iPhone do you actually make frequent use of?