Tangent is a new iPhone app for dickering with your photos. It comes from Ben Guerrette, the brains behind Deco Sketch for the iPhone and iPad, and it is similar in intent. Tangent overlays geometrical patterns onto your photo, and then lets you adjust them.
If we’re guessing about improvments coming to the next iPhone, then a better camera is a pretty safe bet. Each iteration of the iPhone has bumped the megapixels and improved image quality, low-light performance and added featres like HDR and panoramas. Many other makers (cough Samsung cough) have attempted to match the iPhone’s camera, but only one has really come close – Nokia. And the new Lumia 1020 looks even more amazing yet.
Rovio, makers of the all-mighty Angry Birds franchise, kicked off the launch of its new publishing company last month with the new game Icebreakers: A Viking Voyage, but their second title is already here.
Tiny Thief has landed on the App Store this afternoon early reviews have been very positive. The game centers around the character Tiny Thief, an unconventional hero who uses cunning and trickery to out-smart his opponents across six epic medieval adventures.
Priced at $2.99 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, the game plays similar to the point-and-click games of yore but has its own charm and mind boggling puzzles.
Here is the trailer and release notes:
Pacific Rim doesn’t hit theaters until Friday, July 12th, but if you want to rage battle against Guillermo del Toro’s Kaiju monsters on your own the official tie-in game is now available on the App Store.
The new action fighting game gives players access to five of the weaponized robots in the movie called Jaegers, to do battle against the powerful Kaiju monsters. You can choose Story Mode to play 30 different levels that kind of follow the movie, or Survival Mode and see how many waves of Kaiju you can defeat while upgrading the tech of your Jaeger.
You can grab Pacific Rim for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch from the App Store for $5.
Here are the full release notes:
iOS 7 beta has a great new feature in the Notification Center system called Today. This is an attempt, perhaps, to counter Google Now with more useful current information available to you right on your iPhone or iPad’s lock screen.
You can enable the Summary, Traffic Conditions, Day View, Reminders, Stocks, and Tomorrow’s Summary right in the Notification Center, and make it available right on your lock screen, without having to type in your security passcode.
Here’s how to enable, and then manage, this new feature in iOS 7 beta.
Remember how desperate carriers were to get the iPhone on their networks? The billions Sprint and Verizon pledged to Apple in the hopes that they could promise a big enough order that Apple would have no choice but to give them the iPhone?
Looks like the laugh is on them. In fact, this year alone, Verizon might be on the hook for over $14 billion dollars in iPhones they are not likely to sell.
We all have at least one friend who is just verbose as hell on iMessage. Like, dude just doesn’t get the fact that you don’t want to read a novella about how the Chipotle burrito roller lady ripped his tortilla twice, so he sends his 1852 character rant to you like it’s an honor to know of his guacamole debacle.
Rather than having to scroll through extremely long iMessages in the chat window, iOS 7 has a new feature which allows users to expand them into full screen mode. A truncated version of a long iMessage will display in the chat window with a little arrow at the bottom to expand it and read more.
Here’s a GIF of how it works:
Despite “weaker” orders from Apple during the second quarter, Foxconn managed to post revenue that beat analyst estimates thanks to its increased focus on televisions. The company announced revenue of NT$897 billion ($30 million) over the three-month period, which is 0.6% higher than its second-quarter revenue for 2012, and better than the NT$829 billion expected by analysts.
Facebook for iPhone and iPad has been updated to introduce verified celebrities, public figures, and brands. Just like on Twitter, verified accounts will have a blue check mark next to their names, so now you’ll know for certain whether that guy you’ve been talking to really is Justin Bieber.
IFTTT (If This Then That), the do-anything glue that hooks up all your favorite web services autmatically, now has an iPhone app. Not only that, it has three brand-new iOS-only channels which tie into photos, reminders and your contacts.
I’ve been testing it for a few days, and it’s pretty damn cool.
iPhone cases overwhelm me. There are cases made from wood, metal, plastic, recyclable material, leather, and fabric. I’ve tried nearly every kind you can imagine, but I have yet to find one that I’m happy to wake up to every morning—many probably feel that way about their lovers.
In my quest to find a good looking, functional, minimal iPhone case, I came across an aluminum case for the iPhone 5 by Freeform3, a Craftwerk company. What started as a Kickstarter project has turned into the best iPhone bumper I’ve ever used.
Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular photo sharing services for mobile devices, but you’re about to start seeing more of it in your web browser.
This morning Instagram introduced new web embedding for Instagram content that will allow you to post photos and video right on your blog or website:
“Now, when you visit an Instagram photo or video page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it gives you and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the photo or video will appear.”
Here’s an example of how embedded Instagrams appear on the web:
Apple has asked the International Trade Commission to postpone an import ban on the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 while a court considers its appeal. The ban is set to go into affect on August 5 — just under four weeks away — but Apple has argued that it will “sweep away an entire segment of Apple’s product offerings” and harm iPhone carrier partners.
I might be a lapsed Englishman, but there’s something that can never be bred out of me wherever I dwell: my love of a nice cup of tea. Unfortunately, even the Brits are getting lax when it comes to brewing God’s favorite beverage [1], relying on teabags instead of loose leaves and even (the horror!) letting the water sit off the boil for whole minutes before pouring it into the pot (I have seen my own brother do this).
It’s enough to get George Orwell turning in his memory hole.
Luckily, there’s an app for that.
Google has rolled out a major Google Maps update for Android smartphones and tablets, which is also “coming soon” to iPhone and iPad. It introduces a new design that finally boasts a dedicated user interface for tablets, as well as enhanced navigation and new features.
PopCap’s highly anticipated sequel to mega-hit Plants vs Zombies has hit some rough patches lately as the launch date has been pushed back to later this summer. But if you can’t wait a second longer we have good news – you can download the new game right now.
Rather than unleashing Plants vs Zombies 2 on the world all at once, PopCap has decided to do a soft-launch in Australia and New Zealand today to test things out. Which is a bummer for iOS users in the U.S. except it’s really easy to get the new game anyway.
To download the app you’ll have to create an Apple ID for the New Zealand or Australian App Store. Normally, iTunes requires new users to provide a credit card from that country to verify you actually live there, but there’s a workaround.
Being able to find a great restaurant in any city from your iPhone is pretty great and all that, but when you’re starving, the only thing that matters is injecting that food straight into your digestive system as soon as possible.
Rather than drooling on your way to a restaurant you found on Yelp, you can now order your meal straight from the app. Restaurants supporting the feature will have an “Order Pickup or Delivery” button on their Yelp page where you can binge on all the burritos, pizza, bonbons and kabobs you want.
Support for the new feature is limited to select locations, but Yelp says it will be rolling out to more locations in the coming weeks. The free update is available now in the App Store.
Source: iTunes
Using your iPhone while driving is a huge no-no unless you want to die in a fiery crash of metal and flesh. Rather than putting all of its hopes behind Siri though, Apple has dreams of replacing all of your dashboard controls with a touchscreen interface.
According the the U.S. patent filing No. 8,482,535, Apple has developed a concept that would replace the analog controls of car dashboard with tactile and touch screen controls so you can keep your eyes on the road while adjusting temperature or changing the radio station.
Here’s how Apple described its dashboard to the USPTO:
We already know that companies can track our location in real-time through a smartphone’s GPS and serve deals or ads relevant to your location, but what if your iPhone could predict where you’re going to go in 24 hours?
A group of researchers have created an algorithm that uses location tracking data on people’s phones to predict where they will be 24 hours from the present. Shockingly, the average error is within a mere 20 meters.
The Pandora app for iOS has today been updated with a number of new features that promise to make your listening experience all the more pleasurable. In addition to improved playback buffering, there’s a new automatic pause feature, Pandora URL support, and more.
Diamond Scale is what looks like a kind of fake novelty app which purports to turn you iDevice into a scale. The best thing is to just describe it to you.
Do you snap pictures for your blog using your iPhone, and then do the actual blog writing on your Mac? Or some other combination of devices? Then PUPS is for you. It’s a new iPhone app from the makers of crash-happy blogging app Blogsy, and it has one purpose – to upload pictures from your iDevice to your blog’s media library.
Garmin has just announced a neat new HUD box that takes the map info from your iPhone and projects it up onto your car windshield. Named after the Paul Newman character in the movie of the same name[1], the HUD is designed to work with Garmin’s Navigon and Street Pilot apps, connecting to the host phone via Bluetooth.
By now you’ve probably caught wind of the short list of great apps that’ve gone free in celebration of the App Store’s fifth anniversary (if you haven’t grabbed these apps yet, take a look now before all the free ends).
Missing from that list of free apps is Localscope, a fantastic navigation and discovery tool that Apple called the best navigation app of 2011.
Apple released the third beta of iOS 7 to developers this morning, and even though it doesn’t come with any big new features, the new update has plenty of small fixes and encouraging UI refinements.
Here are six GIFS of the biggest UI tweaks Apple made in the new beta: