Facebook Messenger, the standalone app for the social network’s chat system, was updated Tuesday night. The new version of the chat app, which also includes the now-standard bug fixes, adds two new features that can be accessed with a tap to a friend’s chat icon.
All you need to do is tap on a profile picture in any conversation in Messenger to view their Timeline on Facebook. The other option is to call them using Facebook’s voice chat for free.
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Verticon — Productivity — $0.99
If you need to know how how many inches are in a meter or talk to your non-American friends about the weather, Verticon can help you out. It’s a quick conversion tool that you can use to easily calculate equivalent values for weight, speed, length, time, temperature, and pressure, and it all happens inside a super clean and uncluttered interface. You just pick your units and enter a number for the starting figure, and it spits out the converted number at the bottom. You can also switch between the two with a single tap.
Plus, its name sounds like a Bond villain’s evil supercomputer or a new kind of Transformer, and that’s just straight awesome.
Emergency Exit — Utilities — $0.99
If you’re like me, you never go into a new building without knowing how to leave as quickly and safely as possible. I usually apply this skill at parties, which is why I don’t get invited to very many of them. But Emergency Exit wants to use that same thinking to get people out of airports, casinos, and other public buildings in case the worst happens. It uses Indoor Google Maps and your own location to show you all the ways you can get out, including those on other floors. The app already includes 100+ sites in 12 countries, and the developer plans to keep adding more.
The iPhone is a great travel tool, but making your smartphone travel actually smart isn’t about packing it up with dozens of apps you never use or that won’t get you out of the plane seat next to the loo on a crowded holiday flight.
Enter Cult of Mac Magazine. In time for your holiday travels (or maybe escaping from your loved ones for some beach or ski resort time?), we sounded out dozens of road warriors to learn what they really find necessary for the daily commute or continental flight. These black tees and easy-to-launder socks of the app world, if you will, include some surprising picks, many of them free.
If your travel is mostly of the four-wheel variety, you’ll want to read what happens when reporter Alex Heath took smart-driving app Automatic for a month-long spin. (Can it reform his gas guzzling, donut-making driving style?)
In our exclusive Ask an Apple Genius column, we answer your questions about how to get your Mac repaired on the road and how to handle assistance when you live in a town without an Apple store.
You’ll also find our picks for the best in apps this week and what’s really rocking the iTunes store when it comes to books, movies and music.
Mosey on over to Cult of Mac Magazine on iTunes and check it out!
Cake Ideas — Food & Drink — Free
Sometimes the name of an app is a woeful understatement.
Cake Ideas doesn’t contain “ideas” so much as the most complicated baking projects I’ve ever seen. Some of the recipes contained within include lists of things you must pick up at a hardware store because the cakes in question are so badass that they have freaking skeletons. It won’t show you how to make all of them — instructions for the one shaped like a wedding gown would probably melt your phone — but if you’re planning a wedding or just like looking at fancy cakes, prepare to be impressed.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a map of the moon, a big green button, and a diary for your dog.
Here you go:
Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free
Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.
I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.
Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free
Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page.
It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari and it covers information for TVs, computers, cameras, software and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.
Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99
If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.
TimeStamp — Productivity — Free
I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.
My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.
Brazenly calling itself the “ultimate defense” for protecting passwords, documents, credit cards and all your other private stuff, FaceCrypt is being advertised as one of the most secure ways of controlling access to your iOS device.
Instead of asking for an alphanumeric password — or even Touch ID — FaceCrypt requests that users take a “selfie” to prove they are really the person they say they are.
Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99
If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits, and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.
Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free
Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page. It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari. It contains information for TVs, computers, cameras, software, and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include an app for quick notes, food television, and an app to help you visually keep track of your life.
Here you go:
Writedown — Productivity — Free (Pro version: $2.99)
Sometimes, you have to write something really quickly on the go. Like, say, if you were supposed to find an app to write up for your daily post on a tech blog.
Actually, never mind that example. It’s crazy and would never happen. But if it did, Writedown might be a good fit. It’s a quick and easy document creation tool that cuts out all the distractions (other than ads, in this Lite version). You just type your thing in a clean interface, and then you can export it to a text, e-mail, social media, or share it with AirDrop.
It’s bare bones, quick, and easy to use. Not that I’m using it right now.
Crazy.
EndlessTV – Seasons — Lifestyle — Free
Now that we’ve gotten that pesky Halloween thing out of the way with all its gross movies and candy and fun, we can get down to the serious business of planning “The Holidays.” And if you’re need appropriate programming on your phone or iPad right now, EndlessTV’s “Seasons” app might be what you need. It features quick-loading, topical shows (mostly about food) that you can swipe through at your leisure.
I learned how to make a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin and I don’t even know what I’m going to do with that knowledge.
Time Planner — Productivity — Free
When you need to track stuff you need to do, it’s essential to have an app that can handle tasks and to-do items as well as a robust calendaring system. Time Planner does just that, and does it very well. It also adds a colorful palette, a nicely organized way of creating tasks and reminders, and a list of categories that really helps you focus in on what each task is about.
Choose to add a task to Home, Work, Rest, Lifestyle, and other categories to color the tasks with a visual cue. When you start looking at your schedule for the day, you’ll have a colorful reminder of the things you’ll need to focus on, perhaps noticing that you spend too much time at work, and not enough on restful activities.
You can have Time Planner remind you of stuff you need to do by day, time, or location, which is pretty much what all to-do apps should have these days.
Songkick Concerts — Music — Free
Like live music? Got an iOS device full of music? Songkick Concerts looks like the app for you, then, as it trawls your music library to find concerts in your area. Be the first one to grab tickets to hot events, all based on your own music preferences. Sounds good, right?
If you’re traveling to a new city, never fear, as you can use Songkick Concerts to search your destination for upcoming concerts from those very same artists. Want to see Kanye West in Madison Square Garden? I mean, who wouldn’t? Use this app to find out when and where he’s playing, and tap through to buy tickets right within the app itself.
Of course, you’ll want to use Songkick Concerts to bargain shop as well, since it lets you compare venues and prices for all the artists you must obviously want to go see, since they’re in your music library.
Songkick Concerts — Music — Free
Like live music? Got an iOS device full of music? Songkick Concerts looks like the app for you, then, as it trawls your music library to find concerts in your area. Be the first one to grab tickets to hot events, all based on your own music preferences. Sounds good, right?
If you’re traveling to a new city, never fear, as you can use Songkick Concerts to search your destination for upcoming concerts from those very same artists. Want to see Kanye West in Madison Square Garden? I mean, who wouldn’t? Use this app to find out when and where he’s playing, and tap through to buy tickets right within the app itself.
Of course, you’ll want to use Songkick Concerts to bargain shop as well, since it lets you compare venues and prices for all the artists you must obviously want to go see, since they’re in your music library.
Time Planner — Productivity — Free
When you need to track stuff you need to do, it’s essential to have an app that can handle tasks and to-do items as well as a robust calendaring system. Time Planner does just that, and does it very well. It also adds a colorful palette, a nicely organized way of creating tasks and reminders, and a list of categories that really helps you focus in on what each task is about.
Choose to add a task to Home, Work, Rest, Lifestyle, and other categories to color the tasks with a visual cue. When you start looking at your schedule for the day, you’ll have a colorful reminder of the things you’ll need to focus on, perhaps noticing that you spend too much time at work, and not enough on restful activities.
You can have Time Planner remind you of stuff you need to do by day, time, or location, which is pretty much what all to-do apps should have these days.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include guides to this day in history, redecorating and cooking steaks.
Here you go:
On A Day Like This — Reference — $0.99
On A Day Like This is a brand-new app that fills you in on significant events for any day you choose. You just swipe in the date you want, and you can flip through events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances. It’s a simple, clean, easy-to-use app that contains a lot of interesting and potentially useful information.
For example, did you know that November 14 is the day that scientists discovered 90377 Sedna, an object that is orbits the sun at three times the distance of Neptune? Slip that into conversation at work and see what happens.
Houseplan — Productivity — Free
In the past, whenever I’ve wanted to change the furniture layout in a room, I’ve broken out the graph paper and made a tiny scale mockup of the space and everything in it. HousePlan is a new app that is designed specifically to keep things like that from happening. First, you place the walls, windows, and doors, and then you can figure out where the furniture goes before you actually have to lift anything. It’s quick and easy to use and the best part is that you don’t have to wonder if that piece of paper you just threw away is a scrap or your chifferobe.
SteakMate — Health & Fitness — Free
How do you know when a steak is done? You have the finger and thumb trick, the weirder face test, the less elegant “cut it open and look at it” test, or a meat thermometer.
Those wanting a more high-tech way to handle meat cookery might want to try SteakMate, a new app that provides custom timers for your grilling needs. You enter in the cut, thickness, cooking method and desired doneness, and it tells you what to do, including when to flip and how long to let it rest. It can even track multiple steaks simultaneously.
Plus, it’s way cleaner and less awkward than touching the steak and then your face.
1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free
You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.
Enter 1-Minute Desk Workout. It will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.
Upcycling — Entertainment — Free
Green-lifestyle blog Eve of Reduction saw your landfill at Whole Foods the other day and thinks it looks tired and kinda flabby. It wants to help, so it has a thing you might want to check out.
Upcycling is a free app full of instructions and suggestions for repurposing and repairing out-of-use items. It’ll show you how to reupholster a chair, what you can do with used paint cans, and show you cool things other people have done with their would-be junk. It’s all arranged and indexed conveniently within the app, and even if you don’t do anything in there, it’s still interesting to browse through.
EndlessTV – Seasons — Lifestyle — Free
Now that we’ve gotten that pesky “Halloween” thing out of the way with all its gross movies and candy and fun, we can get down to the serious business of planning “The Holidays.” And if you’re getting ready to celebrate American Thanksgiving and need appropriate programming on your phone or iPad right now, EndlessTV’s “Seasons” app might be what you need. It features quick-loading, topical shows (mostly about food) that you can swipe through at your leisure.
I learned how to make a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, and I don’t even know what I’m going to do with that knowledge.
1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free
You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work, and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do, and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.
OK, so you won’t, but 1-Minute Desk Workout will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour, and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.
SteakMate — Health & Fitness — Free
How do you know when a steak is done? You have the finger and thumb trick, the weirder face test, the less elegant “cut it open and look at it” test, or a meat thermometer.
Those wanting a more high-tech way to handle meat cookery might want to try SteakMate, a new app that provides custom timers for your grilling needs. You enter in the cut, thickness, cooking method, and desired doneness, and it tells you what to do, including when to flip and how long to let it rest. It can even track multiple steaks simultaneously.
Plus, it’s way cleaner and less awkward than touching the steak and then your face.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include one that’ll help you mix paint, another that will help you keep tabs on your Twitter numbers, and something for the little monsters.
Here you go:
Roman Ruins HD — Reference — $4.99 (special launch price; reg. $9.99)
If you’re a fan of ancient Rome — and who isn’t? — but can’t justify the expense to actually go and look at its old buildings, you might want to have a look at Roman Ruins HD. It’s a new iPad app that collects a wealth of high-definition pictures, virtual tours, and/or 3D overhead shots of over 350 sites. You can read all about the places, and some locations also use the app’s cool Google Street View integration to let you pretend you’re walking through them. But you’ll have to provide your own bored, screaming children, tired feet and sunburn for the full experience.
True Color — Entertainment — $1.99
True Color is one of those apps that definitely has a practical application but is also just fun to mess around with. Its purpose is to create “formulas” for different hues so that artists can properly mix paints to match and you can easily take samples from your photos. You can also just mess around with the four component colors — red, yellow, blue, and white — to get the tone right before you go wasting all your acrylic on experimenting.
But it’s also good for curiosity. The picture over there, for example, is the exact color of Jake from Adventure Time. Did you know he was 24 percent red? Because I didn’t.
Followers on Twitter — Social Networking — $0.99 (Pro version)
Alright, maybe it only does that for me, but what Followers on Twitter definitely does is give you a quick look at your follower numbers. In addition to what Twitter will tell you, it also lets you know when people take you off of their feeds, how many users aren’t following you back, and how many you’re snubbing. You can also easily delete multiple tweets at once, and I know a guy who could probably make good use of that feature after some unfortunate late-night drunken tirades.
Oh, you don’t know him. He lives in Canada.
Relaxia — Health & Fitness — Free ($3.99 unlock)
The App Store is full of things that play white noise or some ocean sounds to punch your ticket for the Sleepy Train to Snoozeville, but I haven’t seen one as good-looking and versatile as Relaxia. It has six noise “themes” with about eight sounds in each; you can play multiple files at once and adjust their volumes to make your own custom mix of sleep fuel, and you can set a timer so it’s not still playing in the morning.
Because it would really be awful if you woke up, thought it was raining and then it wasn’t.
Artpop — Music — Free
Are you a creative, psychic Lady Gaga fan with an interest in intergalactic travel? If not, does any of that at least sound like something you’d like to see? Hey, Artpop.
It’s a slick, shiny app that ties in with Gaga’s latest album, which is also called Artpop. It’s also a social-media platform, a music player, an art creation and sharing app, and a chatroom. You create your “Aura” (read: avatar), and then you can make projects using a combination of preloaded shapes and patterns and your own pictures and share them with all the other little monsters on the app.
Plus, it’ll tell you if Lady Gaga actually looks at your creation, so it’s kind of the ultimate super-fan experience.
Houseplan — Productivity — Free
In the past, whenever I’ve wanted to change the furniture layout in a room, I’ve broken out the graph paper and made a tiny scale mockup of the space and everything in it. HousePlan is a new app that is designed specifically to keep things like that from happening. First, you place the walls, windows, and doors, and then you can figure out where the furniture goes before you actually have to lift anything. It’s quick and easy to use, and the best part is that you don’t have to wonder if that piece of paper you just threw away is a scrap or your chifferobe.
On A Day Like This — Reference — $0.99
On A Day Like This is a brand-new app that fills you in on significant events for any day you choose. You just swipe in the date you want, and you can flip through events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances. It’s a simple, clean, easy-to-use app that contains a lot of interesting and potentially useful information. For example, did you know that November 14 is the day that scientists discovered 90377 Sedna, an object that is orbits the sun at three times the distance of Neptune? Slip that into conversation at work, and see what happens.
Artpop — Music — Free
Are you a creative, psychic Lady Gaga fan with an interest in intergalactic travel? If not, does any of that at least sound like something you’d like to see? Hey, Artpop.
It’s a slick, shiny app that ties in with Gaga’s latest album, which is also called Artpop. It’s also a social-media platform, a music player, an art creation and sharing app, and a chatroom. You create your “Aura” (read: avatar), and then you can make projects using a combination of preloaded shapes and patterns and your own pictures and share them with all the other little monsters on the app.
Plus, it’ll tell you if Lady Gaga actually looks at your creation, so it’s kind of the ultimate super-fan experience.
Relaxia — Health & Fitness — Free ($3.99 unlock)
The App Store is full of things that play white noise or some ocean sounds to punch your ticket for the Sleepy Train to Snoozeville, but I haven’t seen one as good-looking and versatile as Relaxia. It has six noise “themes” with about eight sounds in each; you can play multiple files at once and adjust their volumes to make your own custom mix of sleep fuel, and you can set a timer so it’s not still playing in the morning.
Because it would really be awful if you woke up, thought it was raining, and then it wasn’t.
Followers on Twitter — Social Networking — $0.99 (Pro version)
Alright, maybe it only does that for me, but what Followes on Twitter definitely does is give you a quick look at your follower numbers. In addition to what Twitter will tell you, it also lets you know when people take you off of their feeds, how many users aren’t following you back, and how many you’re snubbing. You can also easily delete multiple tweets at once, and I know a guy who could probably make good use of that feature after some unfortunate late-night drunken tirades.
Oh, you don’t know him. He lives in Canada.
Boo Halloween — Entertainment — Free
Alright, so today’s app isn’t the most practical one you’ve ever seen. It’s not even the most clever. But it’s fun and easy to use, and it’s Halloween, damn it. Boo Halloween is a quickie photo app that lets you put a variety of spooky faces on pictures of you and your friends using reasonably accurate facial recognition. It comes with six masks — four of which are pumpkins — and you can buy nine more for a dollar if you think your buddy would look better as Batman, a zombie, or Billy, the puppet from Saw. Not much to it, but it’s silly, and it made me chuckle.
BestRoute Free — Navigation — Free
Now that Halloween is over, the rest of the holidays are clamoring for our attention. And some of them require shopping, which can mean a lot of driving all over town. And if you want to make sure you’re taking the most efficient route possible, you might want to plug your stops into BestRoute Free, a new app that lets you quickly and easily mark waypoints (by searching or just a long tap on the screen). It’ll then tell you the best order in which to make your stops.
It would probably also come in handy if you suddenly had to deliver a bunch of pizzas or something.
Coloring Pages for Zane — Education — Free
Coloring Pages for Zane is a simple app that contains coloring-book-style pages you can send to your AirPrint-enabled printer with just a few taps before you let your little ones loose on them with all the crayons. It’s so simple, in fact, that the kids can run it themselves, and that’s by design. The developer made it for their autistic son so that he could easily print out his own pictures and get right to the important business of coloring them in. It launches with a selection of images; additional pictures are available via in-app purchases. But that warm feeling you’re getting in your heart right now is free.
Cocktail Academy — Food & Drink — $3.99
Cocktail Academy is a new app for people who would like to make their favorite drinks themselves or try some new ones without embarrassing themselves in front of their friends. It has directions to create 110 cocktails and even includes video tutorials in which international-award-winning bartender Giancarlo Di Niso shows you exactly what to do (spoiler alert: It involves a lot of measuring and shaking and/or stirring). You can search for drinks several ways including alphabetically and by percentage of alcohol, and the app even lists caloric content for each concoction for your dieting convenience. Grog, for example, has 186 calories, and I never realized I was curious about that until just now.
True Color — Entertainment — $1.99
True Color is one of those apps that definitely has a practical application but is also just fun to mess around with. Its purpose is to create “formulas” for different hues so that artists can properly mix paints to match, and you can easily take samples from your photos. You can also just mess around with the four component colors — red, yellow, blue, and white — to get the tone right before you go wasting all your acrylic on experimenting.
But it’s also good for curiosity. The picture over there, for example, is the exact color of Jake from Adventure Time. Did you know he was 24 percent red? Because I didn’t.
We’re not sure why Google just doesn’t change the name of their Google Search app for iOS, as it does pretty much everything Google Now does on Android, but this new update is pretty fantastic, whatever you want to call it.
Google Search is “now” updated to version 3.1.0, with a whole new set of features, including Notifications, Reminders, new Cards, and a Siri-like Handsfree voice. This last bit lets you command your iPhone to do stuff with the phrase, “OK Google.”
How cool is that?